January 12, 2022
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SAO PAULO/NEW YORK, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Brazilian mills are unlikely to have an early start to the 2022/23 sugar season, despite a good amount of recent rain, as it will take longer for sugarcane to develop and be available for crushing, industry group Unica said on Wednesday.
Unica projects that cane crushing in the centre-south (CS) region in Brazil between January and March will reach only around 4 million tonnes, or more than 50% less than reported in the same period last year.
Brazil's CS crop period goes from April to March, but mills usually start crushing in the first quarter when there is cane available.
Unica's technical director Antonio de Padua Rodrigues does not see that happening this year, in general.
"We will have some crushing in March, but the amount will be much smaller than seen in previous years," he said.
He said the worst drought in 90 years in Brazil last year led to a fast processing rate by mills, so there was not much sugarcane left in the fields to be harvested earlier in 2022.
Recent rains in December and January, in good volumes, will be positive for the next crop, according to Unica, but the plants will mostly not be ready before the official start to the season in April.
In the second half of December there was no crushing at all in the centre-south, the first time Unica has reported zero crushing since December 2007.
Unica said there was also no sugar producing in the period as mills focused on ethanol making to guarantee supplies in the market in the between-crops period.