Brazil Sugar-Cane Crop May Yield More Than Expected, Biagi Says

Author/Source: bloomberg

06/01/2010

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil may produce more sugar and ethanol than expected as cold and dry weather helps boost cane yields in the country’s Center South, the world’s largest producing region, grower Maurilio Biagi Filho said.

This season, crops in the region will yield at least 140 kilograms (308.6 pounds) of sugar per metric ton of cane, or the equivalent in ethanol, Biagi, the world’s second-biggest sugar- cane grower, said today in an interview in Sao Paulo. That’s more than the 138.6 kilograms per ton estimated by industry association Unica in a March 31 report. Mills in the Center South, which make 90 percent of Brazil’s sugar and ethanol, will produce a record 34.1 million metric tons of the sweetener and 27.4 billion liters (7.2 billion gallons) of the fuel in the crop year that started April 1, according to Unica. Declining temperatures and humidity prompt cane to produce more sucrose, the substance that is processed into sugar and ethanol. Biagi is the world’s largest sugar-cane grower after Rubens Ometto, the billionaire controlling shareholder and chairman of Cosan SA Industria & Comercio.