Brazil mills seen ending sugar season as rains hurt harvest operations

Most mills in Brazil’s main centre-south sugarcane region are ending cane crushing for the season, leaving millions of tonnes of cane in the fields to be harvested next year, as rains make harvesting operations difficult and inefficient. Analysts and brokers believe the Brazilian sugar season has basically ended despite previous expectation that mills would go on for longer into December to try to crush available cane and profit from high benchmark sugar prices. “With all the rains we’ve seen, it is likely that many mills end operations, despite having cane in the fields,” said Plinio Nastari, chief analyst at Datagro consultancy. Brazil’s sugar industry group Unica was expecting that more than 70 plants in the region would still be operating in December to crush available cane, after a late start to the season back in April, but that now seems unlikely. “It has been raining in centre-south and that will make it difficult for those mills. Some could just decide to close down for ...