Europe's coming sugar reform may trigger more EU imports of raw sugar for refining as a replacement for the bloc's expected supply shortfall, and a fall in white sugar imports, a leading analyst said on Tuesday. "We see a demand for raw sugar imports in the EU. It's a more viable proposition...than bringing in raw sugar," said Farideh Bromfield, head of sugar research at major trading house ED&F Man.
"We expect that trend to develop and white sugar import demand to go down because of growth in regional refineries," she told a Brussels sugar conference hosted by F.O. Licht.
If the EU's reform removed some five million tonnes from the European market, that gap might be filled by three million tonnes of refined raws, two million of lower-quality whites and maybe 0.5-1.0 million of top-quality 45 ICUMSA whites, she said.
The European Commission, the EU's executive, has called for drastic changes to EU sugar policy, barely altered since its birth in the late 1960s. At present, this policy inflates internal prices to more than three times the world market.
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