Brazil Sugar-Cane Use for Fuel Seen by Datagro Above Outlook

Sugar millers in Brazil’s center south, the main growing region of the largest producer, will use more of this year’s crop to make ethanol than previously forecast because of unseasonal rain, Datagro Ltd. said.

Wet weather at the end of May and in June, usually the dry season, reduced the crop’s potential to yield sugar, Plinio Nastari, president of the Barueri, Brazil-based researcher, said in an interview yesterday. Millers will direct 53.8 percent of the cane harvested in the 2013-14 season that started there in April to making ethanol, up from a previous forecast of 52.6 percent, he said. Brazil makes both the sweetener and the biofuel from sugar cane. Nastari didn’t give a new estimate.