Brazil's cane crush to fall in Second half of May due to protests

Brazil's center-south region is expected to crush less cane in the second half of May than they did in the first half of the month as a result of fuel supply shortages following truckers' nationwide protests, millers and analysts said on Friday.
Several mills have already stopped mechanized harvesting in the region and many others are hours away from finishing diesel supplies, as the protests against high diesel prices drag on for a fifth day, blocking dozens of roads in the country.
"I managed to get some fuel to be able to continue harvesting, but I have only some four hours of machines' working time left," said Gerson Ferreira, a director at Usina Itajobi mill in Catanduva, Sao Paulo state.
Ferreira expects harvesting activities to stall during the weekend and is unsure about when they could resume, depending on an end to the truckers protests and normalization of fuel supplying services.
His situation appears to exemplify what is going on in most other mills in Brazil's main cane belt. "Many of our clients have stopped or are about to stop harvesting," said Willian Orzari Hernandes, a sugar and ethanol consultant at FG/A, a sugar industry advisory firm in Ribeirao Preto, in the heart of Brazil's sugar region.
He says that the center-south region would normally collect some 3 million tonnes of cane per day in the current peak period. If they stop on Friday and along the weekend, and if protests end by early next week leading to a slow supply return, that could mean losing five crushing days or more.
Most center-south farms in the world's largest sugar producer moved to fully mechanized harvesting some years ago complying with stricter legislation that sought to end cane field burning and the harsh manual harvesting.
When harvest stops, mills operations tend to follow suit, since the amount of cane ready for processing at the plants usually lasts only between 12 to 18 hours, said Hernandes.
Cane industry group Unica said many mills have also been unable to transport their production - sugar and ethanol - to ports or to fuel distributors, so foreign buyers should factor in reduced sugar flow out of Brazil in coming days or weeks.