Wet weather in centre-south Brazil this month will boost sugar production in 2012/13 and mean that the harvest will go on longer than initially expected, a leading sugar analyst said on Monday. The rain has delayed harvesting and led to a big line-up of vessels at Brazilian sugar ports, underpinning raw sugar futures prices on ICE, which are trading at below two-month highs.
"The wet weather is impairing the normal harvesting activities. It is also causing a very good sprouting of cane ratoons for the cane that is being harvested," Plinio Nastari, head of Sao Paulo-based consultancy Datagro, told Reuters. "The wet weather is also enabling producers to continue planting cane during the winter months."
Nastari said that even though the rains had triggered delays in harvesting the crop, the wet weather would lead mills to extend the crush. "It will mean that we will also have a longer crop, because of the lost days of crushing. We see the crop in the centre-south of Brazil going towards mid or end December, because of the delays caused by these rains," the analyst said. "The final closing of the crop should happen in the middle or end of January 2013."
Nastari said he did not expect producers to leave cane standing in the fields, unless it rained heavily at the end of the year. Nastari was speaking to Reuters in an interview before a one-day seminar on the sugar sector organised by Datagro in London on June 28.
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