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• Thailand’s worst season of sugar production in a decade has come to an abrupt end.
• Mills finished crushing approximately 40 days earlier than they did last year.
• Sugar production reached 8.27m tonnes, 43% lower year-on-year (YoY), due to poor cane yields caused by 18 months of extremely dry weather.

Worst Thai Sugar Production in a Decade  

• 8.27m tonnes of sugar has been produced in Thailand.
• This is the smallest amount since 2010.

• For the first 90 days of the crushing season, the rate of production aligned with previous years.

• The proportion of in season raws produced decreased slightly to 70% from last season’s 75%.
• The proportion of white sugar produced was 25%.

Thai Crush Ends Earlier This Season  

• After a rapid decline in the daily crushing rate, all 57 Thai mills have now finished crushing for the 19/20 season.
• Mills closed on 26^th March, approximately 40 days earlier than a previous season.
• The daily crushing rate started to slow down at around day 80, much earlier than previous seasons, which only showed signs of slowing around day 110.

• The Thai cane crush totalled 74.9m tonnes, down 56.1m tonnes YoY; this is despite two additional mills being in operation this season.

• The top crushing region, the North East, typically crushes around 40% of the Thai cane crop.
• This year, it showed the largest drop, almost halving its amount YoY.
• This is because yields here were particularly affected by the drought.

• Earlier in the season, we wrote about pollution issues caused by burning cane in Thailand.
• The Government put implemented measures, including a small fine, to encourage mills to reduce their amount of burnt cane to 50% or below.
• This target was achieved across the entire country, but in the Eastern region, 63% of the crushed cane had been burned.