LONDON: White sugar futures on ICE were marginally lower on Monday with an improving outlook for production in India keeping the market on the defensive while robusta coffee and London cocoa prices also fell.

New York-based raw sugar, arabica coffee and cocoa contracts were closed on Monday for the Presidents’ Day holiday.

SUGAR

May white sugar was down 0.1% at $484.20 a tonne by 1053 GMT although prices remained well within this month’s range of $477.20 to $494.40.

Marex analyst Robin Shaw said in a note that estimates of India’s sugar production continued to grow and the consensus was now 32.5 million tonnes or higher.

A Reuters poll issued earlier this month had a median forecast of 31.7 million tonnes for India’s sugar production in the 2021/22 season.

Shaw noted, however, that exports of Indian sugar had dwindled in the past two weeks because of relatively low world prices.

Czarnikow on Monday forecast there would be a global sugar deficit of 2.8 million tonnes in 2022/23 following a surplus of 4.0 million in the previous season.

Egypt’s state sugar buyer ESIIC is believed to have purchased about 100,000 tonnes of raw sugar in an international tender which closed on Saturday, European traders said on Monday.

COFFEE

May robusta coffee fell 0.3% to $2,248 a tonne.

Dealers said the outlook for coffee prices continued to hinge largely on the extent to which production in Brazil rebounds in the 2022/23 season.

Brazilian farmers are expected to harvest 58.9 million 60-kg bags of coffee in the new season (2022/23), a bit more than the 53.7 million bags they produced in the previous cycle that was hit by drought and frosts, broker StoneX projected on Friday.

COCOA

May London cocoa was down 0.2% at 1,728 pounds a tonne.

Cocoa arrivals at ports in top grower Ivory Coast had reached 1.528 million tonnes by Feb. 20 since the start of the season on Oct. 1, exporters estimated on Monday, up 3.7% from the same period last season.