The sugar cane mills in northern Sao Paulo, Brazil's top cane producing state, are reporting lower-than-expected yields with early harvest well underway, the region's milling association, Biocana, said.
Dry weather since March is the reason for the reduction in tonnage of cane per hectare harvested. The region had been expecting a 16 percent jump in cane output this season over last, when it harvested 33.5 million tonnes.
"The crop will be bigger than the last, but not as big as we had thought (39 million tonnes)," said Luciano Sanches Fernandes, president of Biocana, which has associates such as Acucar Guarani, France's Tereos and the Tamoio mill of Cosan.
Under dry weather conditions, the tonnage of cane harvested tends to fall, but is partially offset by increased concentration of sucrose in the cane, which improves the refining and distillation costs of mills.
"I think it will be difficult to recover (the losses) because we are entering the period that is normally dry now ... The forecast is for a dry year, so this will tend to accentuate and not minimise the problem," said Fernandes
Fernandes is also president of the Cerradinho Mill, which crushed 4.6 million tonnes of cane in 2006/07. It is forecast to crush 5.7 million tonnes from the current crop, but initial yields are down 7 percent from last year. Brazil's Cane Industry Association forecast the main center-south cane crop at 420 million tonnes, up 13 percent from last season.
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