BRAZIL: Sugar vessel waiting time falls 8%
Published: 07/27/2012, 4:54:21 PM
The amount of sugar waiting to be loaded at the main ports in Brazil fell 8% in the past week as dry weather helped loading, data from Williams Servicos Maritimos Ltda. Show, according to Bloomberg.
The amount was 2.8 million metric tonnes of sugar ready for loading yesterday at Recife, Vitoria, Paranagua and Santos, according to the shipping agency based in Recife, Brazil. That was down from 3.04 million tonnes a week earlier. Brazil's center south, the main growing region, got mostly dry weather in the 10 days to July 24, Marco Antonneio dos Santos, a weather forecaster at Somar Meteorologia in Sao Paulo, said in a report.
"Weather forecasts currently indicate average to below average rainfall in Brazil's centre south over the next 10 days," Paul Deane, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Melbourne, said in a report. It could help ease "near-term supply concerns."
Above average rainfall in May and June delayed the harvest and shipments from Brazil. Sugar output in the center south was down 22% from the start of the harvest through to July 15, industry group UNICA said.
About 24% of all the sugar waiting at ports, or 675,750 tonnes, was scheduled to go to China, the second-biggest global consumer of sugar after India. China is forecast to import 3.1 million tonnes of the sweetener in the 2011/12 season begun in October, 1 million tonnes more than a year earlier, the International Sugar Organization in London estimates.