Arabica coffee futures on ICE dropped to a two-year low for the fourth straight session on Thursday, on follow-through selling by investors and Brazilian farmers, while sugar traded mostly lower. Arabica coffee futures dropped roughly 1.5 percent, with a weaker Brazilian real spurring export sales.
"They've been helped by weakness of the real, so they've been able to fix some coffee on the way down and not do too badly out of it," a London-based broker said of Brazilian exporters. "If you look at the New York chart in Brazilian real terms, it looks pretty different to dollar terms." September arabica futures fell 3.15 cents, or 2 percent, to settle at $1.5105 per lb, the lowest settlement for the second position since mid-June 2010.
"The Brazilian crop seems to be progressing along very well. There's no reason to turn this monkey around just yet," said Drew Geraghty, commodity broker at ICAP North America in New Jersey. The fall has caused the arabica/robusta spread to narrow to the lowest level since September 2009. Robusta futures on Liffe firmed, with September finishing up $5 at $2,104 a tonne.
Dealers noted a weakening of the July/September spread, which saw the premium on July disappear in recent sessions. The discount widened to $15 per tonne on Thursday, from $9 at Wednesday's close. July raw sugar futures inched up 0.05 cent to close at 19.97 cents a lb, while the most-active October contract closed down 0.17 cent at 19.51 cents per lb.
Sugar output by June 1 from mills in Brazil's main center south sugar-cane belt fell 26 percent from a year earlier to 3.53 million tonnes, data from milling industry association Unica showed. July's premium to October widened to close at 0.46 cent, from Wednesday's close at 0.24 cent, as wet weather delays to Brazil's harvest which could limit the amount of sugar available were eyed. London August white sugar changed direction and finished down $1.70 at $566.70 per tonne.
Iran's Government Trading Corporation (GTC) tendered this week to buy 50,000 tonnes of Brazilian raw sugar for July 15-August 15 shipment, trade sources said. ICE September cocoa futures inched up $4 to settle at $2,263 a tonne, while Liffe September cocoa ended up 10 pounds at 1,561 pounds per tonne.
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