Insight Focus
- Guatemala sugar production is in line with last year’s.
- Guatemala awarded an additional 16k tonnes of sugar under TRQ program.
- If Mexico’s production continues to struggle, Guatemala could be awarded more allocation.
We expect Guatemala to produce approximately 3m tonnes of sugar for the 2022/23 season, almost identical to last year’s harvest. Sugar production has remained the same due to the lack of availability of land. Sugar competes with banana and African palm oil for land usage in Guatemala’s southern region.
Guatemala is the largest sugar producer in Central America and the Caribbean.
So far, Guatemala’s sugar production through the first twenty weeks of its harvest has gone to a strong start. Guatemala’s cane and sucrose yields for the 2022-23 harvest have been above average previous year’s harvests.
Guatemala Sugar Balance Sheet
- We think Guatemala consumes 970k tonnes of sugar domestically.
- 1.74 m tonnes of sugar are exported to the world market (mainly the US).
- Guatemala doesn’t import sugar.
Guatemala’s Sugar Exports
Unlike most countries, Guatemala exports most of the sugar it produces. Guatemala exports have remained between 1.75 m tonnes and 1.89 m tonnes in the last six harvests. The only harvest to go below this threshold happened in 2020/21. The 2020/21 harvest was remarkably low due to high amounts of rain that season.
Guatemala mainly exports its sugar to the United States under the CAFTA agreement and the TRQ Quota. Guatemala has the third-largest TRQ quota in Latin America with 50kmt of duty free quota.
Mexico Cane Hits Trouble
In my previous article, I discussed how the Mexican 2022-23 sugar harvest has been disastrous. Can yields and cane crush for 2022-23 are significantly below previous harvests.
Even though the United States has had a solid start to its harvest, it has increased its TRQ allocations to several countries to alleviate the decrease in Mexican production. The US awarded Guatemala an additional 14k tonnes of raw sugar. Guatemala could be allocated more raw sugar under the TRQ program if Mexico’s production continues to struggle.
