Molasses availability is tight in North America and Europe.
This should be relieved by India and Central America in December.
The market remains strained by the ongoing logistics and inflation issues.

Waiting for the Northern Hemisphere’s New Crop Cane Molasses

The market in Europe and North America is waiting for the new crop from Central America and India. These will be the main supply origins across the next few months. The first shipments of new crop cane molasses will start in December and increase over the turn of the New Year.

In the meantime, cane molasses stocks and availability will be tight in North America and Europe. European demand can be met from domestic and Russian beet molasses, as we’re currently in the peak slicing period for sugar beet.

The molasses market is not immune to the current global issues over logistics, supply chain stress and inflation. The global economy seems to be struggling to match supply and demand across a broad range of inputs and outputs, to name a few – energy in China, container freight and port congestion, natural gas prices and tight labour markets as the global economy tries to recover from the COVID induced downturn.

In the molasses market, the main impact so far has been on our vessel freight and local transport costs. In many ways, the molasses trade is a logistics business and we’re facing the same challenges as other sectors that are similarly exposed.

What this means in the short term is molasses prices will likely follow the path of most imports and commodities with a definite inflationary trajectory. It does appear the global economy has some way to travel to try and ameliorate these issues and it will not be a straightforward process. It will require significant investment from both the private and public sector.