London cocoa eases

Liffe September cocoa ended 33 pounds lower at 2,286 pounds a tonne on Wednesday. Nearby premiums continue to weaken as prices fall back from a recent 32-year peak. Liffe September robusta coffee settled at $1,672 per tonne, off $12. Market seen coming under pressure in the coming months as Vietnamese harvest gets underway and diminishing certified stocks are replenished.
Liffe October white sugar futures ended $3.90 higher at $542.20 per tonne. Market continues to be underpinned by nearby supply tightness and delays to Brazilian shipments.
Both the arabica and robusta markets are expected to come under pressure in the coming months as Brazil's record crop hits the market and the Vietnamese harvest gets under way in September. "From October you're going to get Vietnamese harvest selling pressure on the robusta market," said Kona Haque, analyst at Macquarie Bank. Diminishing certified stocks in London and New York are expected to begin to be replenished by fresh supplies in the latter half of the year, which will also weigh on prices, Haque added.
Raw sugar futures were firmer in a range-bound market, with the trading band seen barely moving in the days ahead, brokers said. Dealers said the market was caught between bullish pressure from a long line of vessels at Brazilian ports to load new-crop sugar and bearish pressure from expectations of large supplies from Brazil, India and former Soviet and African countries.
"We continue to expect a loosening of the supply in the medium term," wrote Nick Penney in a daily market report of Sucden Financial Sugar. "Industry buying chased the market a little bit higher earlier," one London-based trader said. "The selling is perhaps a continuation of the long liquidation that we have seen recently." Dealers said a lot of weak longs had liquidated on Monday after the market failed to reach last week's peaks but the setback could prove short-lived.
The market is still absorbing last week's news of the largest delivery in nearly 14 years, when commodity firm Armajaro took delivery of 240,100 tonnes of cocoa, as reported by UK newspapers. The world's largest chocolate maker, Barry Callebaut, is the end user of about 100,000 tonnes of the cocoa, European trade and industry sources said on Monday.