Insight Focus
Thailand’s sugarcane crushing start will be delayed. This follows a prolonged period of heavy rainfall. Cane crushing usually starts in early December.
Thailand’s Cane Crushing Season
We think that Thailand’s cane crushing will start later than normal this year. This is because weather forecasts predict heavier than normal rainfall in October and November. This rainfall will be on top of strong precipitation seen during May and September this year.
Thai mills usually start crushing cane around the beginning of December. The latest start date we’ve seen in recent years was 10th December in 2020 and 2023. It’s possible that the cane crush starts even later this year if the heavy rains that are forecast materialise.
Heavy rains increase the soil moisture levels, which can make it hard for machines to access fields without compacting soil and damaging the cane. The cane that is harvested can also have a higher degree of extraneous material if it’s gathered from wet fields.
Flooded cane fields are also harder to harvest by hand; cane needs to be cut close to the ground to maximise yields.
Delays Impact World Market
A late crop start is liekly to be of major concern for the sugar market, which is already grappling with a possible shortfall in supply in Q1’25 following Centre-South Brazil’s poor cane performance.
The world will be reliant on raw sugar supply from Thailand at this time, but a delayed crop start could mean this sugar becomes available later than hoped. In particular, Indonesian refiners could receive fresh import licences in early 2025 and will seek Thai raw sugar at this time.
Given the strength in the H/K spread we expect new season sugar to flow rapidly from upcountry to Thai ports once the harvest starts. This means that we think a record 2.3m tonnes of Thai raw sugar could be available to ship in Q1’25… but this is dependent on cane crushing accelerating quickly.
