Insight Focus
We think the world will produce a surplus of almost 4.8m tonnes of sugar in 2023/24. This represents the 4th successive year of production surplus. Some mills in Thailand are expected to finish crushing earlier than the previous season.
Global Sugar Production
We forecast that global sugar production will reach 182.8m tonnes in 2023/24, up 5.5m tonnes from the previous crop year.
This is a slight decrease from our February estimate of 183.5m tonnes, owing to a slight downgrade to our forecast for a number of smaller sugar producing countries.
Global Sugar Consumption
In 2023/24, we expect 178m tonnes of sugar to be consumed globally, an increase of 2.3m tonnes from the previous crop year.
Since the last update, we have not made any changes to this forecast.
Small Production Surplus
Our estimate for production surplus has been revised downwards slightly since our previous update, and we now anticipate that production will outpace consumption in 2023/24 by 4.8m tonnes.
This large global surplus is being driven by the upcoming 2023/24 CS Brazil crop which we expect to be the 3rd largest on record.
This will be the 4th production surplus in a row which means that global stocks at the low point in the cycle (per person each year) may increase from 10 Kg to 10.5Kg.
Thailand Update
So far during the 2022/23 season, mills in Thailand have crushed approximately 87.5m tonnes of cane, yielding approximately 10.1 million tonnes of sugar.
Across the whole season we expect mills to crush roughly 96 million tonnes of cane, resulting in a production of about 10.6 million tonnes of sugar by the end of 2022/23.
However, some mills in Thailand have announced that they will close earlier this year.
When the rains came in this time last season, some mills were still processing cane. As a result, the quality was subpar, and access to the field became more difficult.
As a result, Thai mills are pressing farmers to deliver cane today.
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