Latest news are available in our daily reports.
RUSSIA
According to the Federal Customs Service, Russia has imported 22.8 thousand tons of white sugar in March 2018, and by the end of 3 months - 70.5 thousand tons (+ 8.3% by 2017). In addition, in January-March 2018, Russia imported 1.3 thousand tons of raw sugar (-85.2% by 2017).
•
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, as of May 8, 2018, sugar beet was sown on an area of 842.7 thousand hectares or 76.9% of the forecast (in 2017 - 990.2 thousand hectares).
•
According to Sugar.ru price monitoring data for the period from 26.04.2018 to 10.05.2018 the US dollar rate increased by 2.1% (on 26.04 - RUR 61.75/$, on 10.05 - RUR 63.01/$). Ruble Moscow wholesale price for sugar increased by 2.00 RUR/kg (+6.06%), Krasnodar wholesale price increased by 2.00 RUR/kg (+6.41%). US dollar Moscow wholesale price for sugar increased by $0.021 /kg (+3.93%), Krasnodar wholesale price increased by $0.022 /kg (+4.36%).
Over the past two weeks (the previous weekly report was not made due to May holidays) wholesale prices for sugar, refuting the arguments of the skeptics, continued to grow steadily. There are two and a half months left before the start of a new sugar season and a number of companies have already sold their stocks of sugar, or keep small balances "just in case". Prodimex raises prices by 0.20-0.30 rubles per kilogram daily, Dominant and Rusagro usually declare prices a little higher, but from time to time they sell sugar by the market. The Pokrovsky concern returned to the market, finding the prices attractive enough to start selling sugar again. On Thursday, May 10, real sales are in the range of 33-34 rubles per kilo basis Krasnodar.
Export of sugar continues to fall as prices continue to rise. For 10 days of May, Russia shipped only 4.2 thousand tons of white sugar by rail, including 2.4 thousand tons to Kazakhstan, (in April only Kazakhstan received 14.3 thousand tons). At the same time, the transit of sugar by the Russian railway to Central Asia and Azerbaijan remains significant: in the first ten days of May, Ukraine and Belarus shipped 17,200 tons of sugar to these regions (43.6 thousand tons in April, March - 46,8 thousand tons).
In Novorossiysk, two steamers with raw sugar are expected to be unloaded with further delivery of total tonnage of 88,000 tons to Kazakhstan, some of the processed sugar will most likely go to Uzbekistan. Recently, steamships with Kazakhstani raw are not put to berths for a long time and are unloaded extremely slowly, which should entail serious fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is logical to assume that this is due to problems with payments for raw sugar. Two more ships with 78 thousand tons of raw sugar are preliminarily nominated from Brazil to the ports of Georgia and Russia.
Dry weather persists in Krasnodar and Rostov regions, and if there is no rain in the near future, it will be possible to forecast lower yields in these regions than last year.
UKRAINE
By May 7, the sowing of sugar beet was carried out on an area of 271 thousand hectares, which is 90% of the forecast, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy said.
КОММЕНТАРИИ