LONDON: Raw sugar futures on ICE were weaker on Tuesday, dragged down by losses in crude oil and global stock markets, while arabica coffee edged up but remained in striking distance of the prior session's 2-1/2 month low.
SUGAR
* March raw sugar fell 0.08 cent, or 0.6 percent, to 12.41 cents per lb by 1147 GMT.
* Dealers said sugar continued to be heavily influenced by energy and equity markets.
* Oil prices fell 4 percent on Tuesday, dropping for a third consecutive session as reports of swelling inventories and forecasts of record US and Russian output combined with a sharp sell-off in global stock markets.
* Lower energy prices diminish the competitiveness of ethanol in top grower Brazil, bolstering concerns that mills may switch more production from the biofuel back to sugar.
* "The sugar market is worried by anything that makes ethanol less attractive, and so sugar more attractive, to Brazilian cane millers," analyst Tobin Gorey of Commonwealth Bank of Australia said in a market note.
"We can understand the reflex but any impact on sugar supply is the best part of a half-year away. Oil prices could easily be very different by that time.
* March white sugar fell $1.60, or 0.5 percent, to $338.10 a tonne.
COFFEE
* March arabica coffee rose 0.30 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $1.0040 per lb by 1053 GMT. The second month fell to a 2-1/2 month low of 99.75 cents on Monday.
* Dealers said a further decline in US green coffee stocks in November may have provided some support although the scope for any significant rebound appeared limited following the harvesting of a record crop in Brazil.
* Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer and exporter, produced a record 61.65 million coffee bags in 2018, the country's agricultural statistics agency Conab said on Tuesday.
* March robusta coffee was up $4, or 0.3 percent, at$1,482 a tonne. The second position fell to a low of $1,468 on Friday, its weakest in more than three months.
COCOA
* March London cocoa rose 10 pounds, or 0.6 percent, to 1,667 pounds a tonne.
* Dry winds and below-average rainfall in most of Ivory Coast's cocoa growing regions last week could jeopardize the development of the last stage of the October-to-March main crop, farmers said on Monday.
* March New York cocoa was up $22, or 1.0 percent, at$2,252 a tonne.
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