Australia and Thailand are to raise sugar exports by more than 1m tonnes combined in 2013-14, stoking ideas that the world is on for a third successive surplus in the sweetener.
US Department of Agriculture foreign attaches, in their first forecasts for the season, pegged exports from Australia, the third-ranked shipper, at 3.4m tonnes, a rise of 300,000 tonnes year on year.
In Thailand, the second-ranked sugar exporter, shipments will hit a record 8.5m tonnes in 2013-14, 1.0m tonnes above the figure the USDA has pegged in for the current season.
Brazil, which has just started its crushing season, is expected by forecasters at the official Conab crop bureau to achieve a record 654m-tonne cane harvest.
However, there is some dispute over the proportion which will be turned to sugar, given the increasingly attractive economics for making ethanol, in the face of week prices of the sweetener.
