Brazil’s Copersucar sees sugar sales growing by 27% in 2023/24
Copersucar, the world’s largest sugar and ethanol merchant, expects its sugar sales to grow by 27% in the 2023/2024 season from the previous one, boosted by a leap in sugarcane crushing and higher allocation of the raw material to produce the sweetener.
CEO Tomas Caetano Manzano told a press conference that the sales growth would be driven by its trading arm, Alvean, which is expected to increase its sales to 12 million metric tons in 2022/2023, compared to 9 million metric tons in the previous season.
“We would be talking about a level of 14 million metric tons (in total)”, he said referring to the total expected volume to be traded in by Alvean and Copersucar in several countries.
Brazilian mills are directing as much cane as they can to produce sugar, instead of ethanol, according to the executive, as international prices for the sweetener are still near the 12-year highs reached in April.
The company expects to crush around 105 million metric tons of sugarcane during in 2023/2024, up from the 89 million metric tons crushed in the previous harvest.
Copersucar’s net profits during the 2022/2023 season reached 679 million reais ($142 million), its second-largest ever recorded, below only the 781 million reais reported in the previous season.
The strong performance reflects the best-ever result for Alvean, which grew its market share to 29% of global sugar sales during the 2022/2023 cycle, according to Copersucar.
The company’s revenue last season, however, declined 6.4% on a yearly basis to reach 70.1 billion reais, it added. ($1 = 4.7772 reais (Reporting by Roberto Samora Writing by Peter Frontini Editing by Louise Heavens and David Alire Garcia and Edward Tobin)
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