The Market in January
The post-Christmas lull in the sugar market lasted until the final day of January, when prices slipped to a two-and-a-half month low. Fundamentally, the end of the CS Brazil harvest has come with few surprises, the Thai harvest has been slow to get going, with some analyst pointing to labour availability issues, while Indian output is substantially ahead of the previous season’s totals, thanks to higher throughput at Maharashtra mills. Meanwhile, for Europe, end-of-season figures are being collated with positive beet yields lifting the EU and Ukraine totals.