Raw sugar futures sank for the second straight session as the market turned its focus to expiration of the spot raw sugar contract later on Wednesday, while the rest of the softs complex declined because of a firm dollar. New York's March raw sugar futures lost 0.43 cent to finish at 25.66 cents a lb, a premium of 0.65 cent to May which ended down 0.32 cent at 25.01 cents a lb.
London May white sugar futures extended losses as the dollar firmed and was down $10.10 to end at $652.40 a tonne. "It's dollar strength. People are taking risk off and month-end profit-taking," said Nick Gentile, head of trading at commodity fund Atlantic Capital Advisors.
Sugar market players monitored a shrinking front-month premium before the March contract expires. The March/May spread on ICE has narrowed from more than 1 cent last week, an indication the amount to be delivered may fall short of earlier expectations at the upper end of a 500,000 to 1 million tonne range.
There was no immediate word how much has been delivered to March at its expiration, brokers said. "I don't think its going to be as large as people were talking about," said Gentile. "All eyes will be on the spread," said Pierre Sebag of London-based consultancy Sugar K. ICE Futures US said open interest in the March contract stood at 18,371 lots as of Tuesday, down 10,506 lots from the previous session. That is equivalent to 933,290 tonnes of raw sugar, below the 1.0 million tonnes traders previously said might be delivered.
Open interest in the contract has declined by more than 45,000 lots in the previous four sessions. Traders said open interest could be down to 6,000 to 8,000 lots by the close, or around 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes. Some brokers believe a delivery of 500,000 tonnes of sugar remains likely. The origins are still expected to be Thailand, Central American, Brazil and the Philippines. "It's expiry today, and we expect support in (ICE) March at 25 cents a lb to hold," said Thomas Kujawa of brokerage Sucden Financial.
In cocoa, the market digested options expiration in the London cocoa market at midday on Wednesday which did not trigger heavy volumes, dealers said. London May cocoa was down 29 pounds or 1.7 percent to settle at 1,493 pounds per tonne. New York's May cocoa dropped $36 to close $2,334 a tonne. The market continued to move in a sideways range after falling to a 15-month low at $2.1970 per lb on February 16. May arabicas dropped 3.00 cents to finish at $2.0325 per lb. Liffe May robusta futures were $1 up to close at $2,009 a tonne. Robusta coffee futures firmed, with dealers focused on slow exports from top producer Vietnam.