Australia: Sugar Semi-annual

FAS/Canberra’s sugar cane production estimate for Australia is revised up for marketing year (MY) 2022/23 to 33 million metric tons (MMT), with the major production areas receiving well above-average rains during harvest which has promoted greater sugar cane growth. However, this is negatively impacting sugar content and the rains have substantially delayed harvest, which is expected to have a further detrimental impact on the sugar content in the later period of harvest. As a result, despite the increase in the sugar cane production estimate, the sugar production estimate for MY 2022/23 has been reduced to 4.35 MMT from the previous forecast of 4.45 MMT. Raw sugar exports for MY 2022/23 are expected to remain unchanged at 3.45 MMT despite the lower raw sugar production estimate because of larger carry in stocks.