Brazil's main center-south cane belt crushed 40.47 million tonnes in the second half of September, recovering some ground after a wet start to last month slowed harvest of the world's biggest sugar cane crop, industry association Unica said on Thursday. Crushing in the second fortnight of September surpassed the disappointing results of 29.6 million tonnes in the first half of September, when rains kept mills away from fields. The latest results fell within market expectations of close to 40 million tonnes and ICE futures were steady after Unica's data.
Mills in the center-south, which accounts for 90 percent of Brazil's cane crop, produced 2.39 million tonnes of sugar in the second half of September, well above the 1.68 million tonnes in the wetter first two weeks of last month. Cumulative sugar output of 23.25 million tonnes for the April-March season through September remains 7.3 percent behind last year, as mills continue to strongly favour ethanol production. Unica data showed, however, that mills were allocating greater amounts of cane to sugar production in late September, with 42.5 percent of the cane crushed going to the sweetener, up from 40 percent in the first half of the month. The rest of the cane is used for ethanol production. Ethanol output reached 1.99 billion liters in late September, up from 1.56 billion liters in the first half of last month, Unica said.