Sugar Output Drops 6.9% in Brazil Region This Crop to Jan. 15

Sugar output in Brazil’s Center South, the world’s largest producing region, fell 6.9 percent in the current crop year through Jan. 15, industry association Unica said.

Output fell to 31.2 million metric tons from 33.5 million tons a year earlier, Sao Paulo-based Unica said in an e-mailed statement today. The volumes were little-changed from those reported previously because most harvesting for the crop year that started on March 1 ended in December.

Growers in the Center South, where about 90 percent of Brazil’s sugar and ethanol is produced, reaped 492.7 million tons of cane in the period, down 11 percent from a year earlier.

Ethanol output declined 19 percent to 20.6 billion liters (5.4 billion gallons), Unica said. Mills turned 48.3 percent of the cane into sugar and the rest into fuel. That compares with 45 percent a year earlier.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lucia Kassai in Sao Paulo at lkassai@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net