Insight Focus
- Cane crushing in CS Brazil has started slowly.
- In this week’s Ask the Analyst, we discuss whether this will have ramifications at the end of the season.
- If you’d like us to answer one of your questions in an upcoming edition, please email will@czapp.com.
2022/23 Crush Started Late
As we have already reported, the 2022/23 cane crush in Centre South Brazil has started slower than normal as mills sought to maximise the time possible for the cane to mature.
As a result, fortnightly pace for the second half of April is down by 20% on the 2021/22 campaign (itself down almost 25% on 2020/21). All mills are expected to be operating by next week.
This raises the question over whether mills will be able to finish the crush before the rainier season begins to disrupt progress later in the year.
What Happens Later in the Season?
The amount of sugar produced in a season is determined by the volume of cane, it’s sucrose content (ATR), and the sugar mix decided by mills. Once crushing begins, a lot of attention is paid to the ATR since it can be a good indicator to the health of the crop.
ATR is generally lower at the start of the season as the cane isn’t yet fully mature, and peaks in around September as the cane becomes more water-stressed through the middle of the year. After this, as rains become more frequent the ATR begins to decrease again.
For example, towards the end of the 2018/19 season, the early onset of rain at the beginning of August, and above average rain into September helped drive the ATR down earlier in the campaign than normal.
Therefore, the more cane that is crushed later in the season, the higher the risk of sucrose loss from worsening weather conditions.
Is the 2022/23 More Likely to Finish Late?
Besides the drought hit 2021/22 campaign, CS Brazil commonly crushes around 600m tonnes of sugar cane in a season.
This season we currently forecast a total cane volume of 550m tonnes of cane, significantly less than what mills can handle.
Even accounting for a delayed start to the crush, by the time we enter the latter stages of the season it is unlikely that mills will have to keep crushing longer than expected because of the delay.
The cane volume is well within what can comfortably be crushed over a whole campaign; thus the risk of finishing late is smaller.
Rainfall can add delays and disrupt the crushing progress since the cane and the field need to be dry for the machinery to work efficiently, however at this stage it is near-impossible to try and forecast that far ahead.
Therefore, provided normal weather conditions, it is currently unlikely that the 2022/23 crop will finish later than normal.
Other Insights That May Be of Interest…
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