REUTERS, Johannesburg | Wednesday 12.15pm.
SOUTH Africa could harvest a near-record sugar cane crop this summer and the industry has secured its important Far East markets, according to the cane growers’ association and the latest edition of the South African Sugar Journal.
Quality problems and a poor ratio of cane to sucrose pointed to the 2000/01 season’s sugar production coming in just below 1998/99’s record output of 2.64 million tonnes, said Brian Sugden, the director of agricultural economics at the South African Cane Growers’ Association.
“The latest estimate from the millers is there will be 23.946 million tonnes of cane to be crushed, which is higher than the 1998/99 estimate of 23.9 million tonnes,” Sugden said.
“If the ratio improves and the drier weather over the past few weeks suggests that there is no reason why the quality shouldn’t improve…we should get fairly close to the 2.64 million tonnes.”
South Africa produced 2.53 million tonnes of sugar in the 1999/00 season.
The journal also carried a report of a visit by a South African Sugar Association (SASA) delegation to the country’s key export markets in Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore where new long-term agreements were negotiated.