BRASÍLIA: Brazil’s sugar exports will top 27m tonnes this season for only the second time, despite a disappointing cane harvest in the key Centre South region, as mills prioritise the sweetener over ethanol.
The US Department of Agriculture’s Sao Paulo bureau ditched expectations of a rise in Brazilian cane output in 2016-17, on an April-to-March basis, seeing the harvest fall 9.0m tonnes to 658.0m tonnes, citing the setback from poor weather to the harvest in the Centre South. “The Centre South sugarcane production [estimate] has been revised downward to 608m tonnes, down 22m tonnes from the previous estimate due to drier weather than historical averages” early in the season.
“Lower investment on crop management,” a reflection of the low sugar prices which prevailed until earlier this year, will also “negatively affect sugarcane volumes for the last third of the crop”, the bureau said. Indeed, it underlined ideas of a timely finish to the Centre South crushing season, which “is expected to end in December, therefore not repeating the abnormal length of the 2015-16 harvest which stretched through March 2016”.
