Insight Focus
- Colombia is expecting an el Niño phenomenon this year after two consecutive la Niña’s.
- This should make sugar cane harvesting easier.
- We expect 2.1m tonnes sugar production this year, up from 2m tonnes last year.
Precipitation Levels are Lower than the Last Two Years
After two consecutive la Niña phenomena, Colombia’s rainfall has started to return to normal. So far, precipitation levels are more in line with 2020 and earlier which will help overall sugar production.
Precipitation levels are also below the 10-year average. This is helpful because when it rains too heavily it is hard to harvest the cane fields which means there is less time to crush the crop. So far Colombia has seen less rainfall at the beginning of the year and in the months of April through July which are the months where we saw more precipitation in 2021 and 2022.
Production Increases to 2.1 million tonnes
As a result, we are expecting production to increase to 2.1 million tonnes in comparison to around 2 million tonnes over the last two years.
Since January, Colombia’s sugar production for this year is almost 896k tonnes which is behind last year. However, since April we have seen production pick up and there is still plenty of time to surpass last year’s crop.
The reason why we saw production struggling to pick up at the beginning of the year is because Colombian cane is still seeing the effect of the weather from previous years. Less cane is being crushed and the cane that is being crushed is lighter than normal. This means that even though we are seeing production is starting to recover production will still not reach 2.2 million tonnes.
What Does This Mean for Exports?
With production slightly increasing, we are expecting exports to increase as well. So far exports are very similar to where they were at this point last year.
We expect exports to be at 640k tonnes or less depending on total production which is still below the usual export volumes for Colombia.
