Early hedge lifting combined with a mild macro recovery led Jul’22 to print up to 18.75 during the early part of the session, however the fundamental outlook seems to have taken some precedence once more and values returned to small deficit as the morning wore on. The arrival of Americas based traders drew a little more support back into the market during the early afternoon but still we seemed reluctant to follow the wider commodity community upwards and the move topped out at a marginal new session high 18.77. Unica published the numbers for 2nd half April this afternoon and showed sugar production at 0.934m tonnes from a crust of 23.82m tonnes with a sugar split of 37.2%. This was a far more neutral set of numbers than seen two weeks ago, and though the market initially continued sideways the interpretation appeared to be to the bearish side with prices returning to the lower end of the range during the final hour. The close then saw some aggressive selling send Jul’22 to a new recent low 18.51 with settlement at 18.54, and with the nature of the selling suggesting an effort was being made to trip more of the long holders out of the market focus now turns to the 18.44 March low with further support testing seemingly inevitable.
