NEW YORK/LONDON: Raw sugar futures on ICE fell on Thursday, pulling away from a multi-week peak set a day earlier as prices tracked energy markets lower, while the weaker Brazilian currency weighed on both sugar and arabica prices.
SUGAR
* March raw sugar settled down 0.2 cent, or 1.6 percent, at 12.67 cents per lb. It was the contract's first negative finish in five sessions, coming a day after prices hit a five-week peak of 12.94 cents.
* Prices were pressured by weaker oil prices, dealers said.
* Weaker oil prices undermine the competitiveness of ethanol in top grower Brazil, stoking fears that mills will switch more of their output back to sugar from the biofuel.
* Prices were also weighed down by a weaker currency in Brazil, a top grower. A weaker currency can encourage producer selling by increasing local returns on dollar-traded commodities such as sugar and coffee.
* India is likely to export 2.5 million to 3.5 million tonnes of sugar in the 2018/19 marketing year that started on Oct. 1, five dealers and three industry officials told Reuters; far below the official 5 million-tonne target.
* March white sugar settled down $3.60, or 1 percent, at $344.10 per tonne.
COFFEE
* March arabica coffee settled down 1.05 cent, or 1 percent, at $1.0425 per lb., pressured by the weaker Brazilian currency.
* Prices hit a five-week high in the prior session.
* Top grower Brazil is expected to produce 53.4 million 60-kg bags of coffee in 2019, a 10.8 percent drop from the record 2018 crop, statistics agency IBGE said.
* Dealers were keeping a close eye on the weather in Brazil, where conditions in some coffee-growing regions are dry.
* March robusta coffee settled up $1, or 0.07 percent, at $1,536 per tonne.
* Traders in Vietnam, the world's top robusta grower, lowered their coffee output forecasts by 10 percent. They now expect 27 million 60 kg bags for 2018/19, compared with earlier forecasts of 30 million bags.
COCOA
* March New York cocoa settled up $18, or 0.8 percent, at $2,369 per tonne.
* May London cocoa settled up 1 pound, or 0.1 percent, at 1,739 pounds a tonne.
* Cameroonian cocoa arrivals rose 11 percent by Nov. 16 from the start of the season in August, despite worsening violence in the country's Anglophone regions.
* The chances of El Niño forming and continuing through the northern hemisphere spring 2019 were at about 65 percent, a US government weather forecaster said.
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