Insight Focus
Raw sugar futures traded sideways. End-users have taken advantage of the price drop, adding heavily to their hedges. Speculators are continuing to add to their shorts.
New York No.11 Raw Sugar Futures
The raw sugar market has settled into the 18c area over the last week.
End-users have been actively purchasing more cover, causing the commercial long positions to grow by 24k lots. This was most likely Chinese refiners whose import quotas are breakeven.
Looking at the producers, while prices are the lowest in over two years, they are all poorly hedged and have been compelled to sell at today’s prices.
Speculators have added over 91k lots of new short positions since the beginning of April, when No.11 prices were above 19c, and they have continued to do so, with 12.5k lots of new additional short positions added just last week, bringing the net spec position down to -84k lots.
The No.11 futures curve remains flat across the board.
London No.5 Refined Sugar Futures
The No.5 refined sugar futures has traded sideways in the past week, hovering around 550USD/mt.
With the market moving sideways, speculator decided to close over 4k lots of long positions, bringing the net spec positions down to 15.5k lots.
The refined sugar futures curve has strengthened over the past week, with the curve remaining in backwardation through to Dec’24.
No.5 Open Interest
White Premium (Arbitrage)
The Q/N white premium has strengthened over the past week, and is currently standing at 140USD/mt.
Many re-exports refiners need around 105-115USD/mt above the No.11 to profitably produce refined sugar. The current white premium is well above this level, which means we should theoretically see a pick-up in demand soon.
For a more detailed view of the sugar futures and market data, please refer to the appendix below.
No.11 (Raw Sugar) Appendix
No.5 (White Sugar) Appendix
White Premium Appendix
