Insight Focus
- Thai cane crushing is proceeding well after a late start.
- Sucrose levels lower than expected due to unfavourable weather conditions.
- We have revised our cane and sugar forecast up slightly.
Thailand is one of the world’s major sugar exporters and plays a key role in the Asian sugar markets.
We had previously forecast that this year’s cane crop would be one of the worst in the last 15 years. The outlook remains poor but following initial reports from the cane industry we’ve lifted our estimates a little. Cane yields seem to be a little better than we’d feared, though we hear reports that the cane quality being delivered to mills isn’t great, with higher-than-normal extraneous matter.
We have therefore lifted our cane crush forecast from 66.5m tonnes to 73m tonnes.
However, sucrose yields this year are disappointing. The sucrose content of the cane is low, thanks in part due to late rains in September and October which has hampered sucrose concentration in the plants.
We are therefore lowering our forecast of this season’s sucrose yield from 11.2% to 10.8%.
This means we forecast sugar production at 7.9m tonnes this season, up from our prior forecast of 7.4m tonnes. This would be the worst output in 3 seasons, with most of the shortfall being seen in raw sugar availability for the world market.
