January 22, 2015
Wall Street Journal
By Leslie Josephs
Investors have found a sweet spot among plunging commodity markets: sugar.
"Prices Are Up About 10% Due to Brazil’s Weather and Taxes, While Most Commodities Are Down"
January 22, 2015
Reuters
By Edith Honan
NAIROBI Jan 21 (Reuters) - Kenya's raw sugar production is expected to rise 4 percent to 617,039 tonnes in 2015, buoyed by extra factory capacity and improved supply of cane, the industry regulator said on Wednesday.
East Africa's biggest economy has an annual sugar deficit of around 200,000 tonnes, which is usually filled by imports from other producers in the region. The country is struggling to improve output due to relatively high production costs and loss-making sugar factories.
January 22, 2015
Reuters
By David Brough
LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Raw sugar futures edged up to a seven-week peak on Wednesday on short covering and a firmer real currency, while arabica coffee also rose, although forecasts for rains in Brazil limited gains.
Cocoa edged lower, with traders focused on the Asian fourth-quarter cocoa grind, a measure of demand, due later this week.
January 22, 2015
Reuters
KAMPALA: Uganda’s three largest sugar refiners are expected to produce 11.5 per cent more this year, helped by an expanded cane acreage, an industry official said yesterday.
January 21, 2015
Bloomberg
By Justin Doom
Green Biologics Ltd., a U.K.-based company that makes chemicals from agricultural waste and sugar cane, raised $76 million to expand production, including converting a Minnesota ethanol plant to make butanol and acetone.
Ethanol producers in Brazil used to hate government controls on gasoline prices that forced them to lower prices to be competitive, according to Bloomberg.
Now that oil prices globally have slumped by more than half, they can't live without them.
The state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said Tuesday it would continue to sell gasoline at prices that are about 60% higher than prices abroad. That's welcome news for Brazil's struggling ethanol industry, the biggest producer of the biofuel after the U.S.
January 20, 2015
SugarOnline
Brazil's Morro Agudo substation, which will be built by power company CPFL Energia SA, will make feasible biomass electricity projects of sugar and ethanol producers in Sao Paulo state, Brazilian sector news portal Jornal Cana said on Friday, according to SeeNews.
CPFL won a 30-year concession for the 500/138kV substation at the recent transmission auction held by regulator Aneel. The substation will improve the network of local power distributor CPFL Paulista.
January 20, 2014
SugarOnline
Raw sugar prices Tuesday rose to the highest level in more than a month after top producer Brazil unveiled higher taxes on gasoline, a rival fuel to sugar-based ethanol, according to Dow Jones.
Brazil is both the world's largest producer of sugar and cane-derived ethanol, and its mills can often produce both products, changing the emphasis on either the sweetener or biofuel depending on prices and demand.
January 19, 2015
Sugaronline
White sugar futures on ICE eased under pressure from a weaker oil market on Monday, according to Reuters.
The U.S. softs markets were shut on Monday for the Martin Luther King Day holiday.
March white sugar was down US$2.40 or 0.6% at US$396.50 a tonne at 1236 GMT.
"We expect sugar prices to remain depressed in the coming months as Brazilian supply proves more than adequate to cover limited incremental demand," Morgan Stanley said in a commodities market report.
Thailand has abolished sugar import tariffs for South Korea in the hope that Seoul will return the favour, according to Thailand's Bangkok Post.
Sirivuth Siamphakdee, chairman of the Thai Sugar Millers Corporation, said the government had already removed sugar from the "highly sensitive list" of products with a 1.22% import tariff under the implementation of the Asean-South Korea free-trade agreement.