Thai sugar premiums were expected to hold steady over the next week on limited domestic supply. Offers for Thai 100 ICUMSA white sugar, considered consumer grade, for October shipment were steady at $10 over London prices, but there were no bids on Thursday.
"Exporters are not really under pressure to lower premiums to attract overseas buyers. They do not have much stock left in hand," one trader said. Thailand is Asia's top exporter of raw sugar. Its key buyers are Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia.
Exporters were estimated to hold around 200,000 tonnes of white sugar and a similar amount of raw sugar, carried over from the previous crop ended in September, traders said. Heavy rain has fallen throughout the country, but floods in central and northern Thailand, the cane growing areas, had not had much impact on the new crop.
However, continued heavy rain could delay the harvest, traders and millers said. "Now, everybody seems to agree that the harvest would not start until sometime in December because of rain," said Buntline Ketosis, a director of the Thai Cane and Sugar Board.
The wet season in Thailand usually starts in June and lasts to the end of October, about a month before the cane harvest season begins in November. Loading activity was thin with around 30,000 tonnes of sugar due to be shipped, mainly to China this month, shippers said. ICUMSA measures the colour of sugar. The lower the ICUMSA level the higher the degree of whiteness.