Raw sugar’s March contract settled at 19.93 cents a pound on Friday, up 0.99 cents or 5.2 percent on the day and 1.43 cents or 7.7 percent on the week — the highest for the front contract since April 2025, clearing the early-September high in a single session.
The driver is weather on both hemispheres. In Brazil, Datagro’s Plinio Nastari estimates excess rain in the Center-South could leave a record 35 million metric tons of cane standing in the fields at season’s end — above the 24 million left over in 2015-16 — with milling now likely to run into February or March. Wet cane carries less recoverable sugar, tilting mills toward ethanol: StoneX’s sugar desk told Reuters that Center-South output may not reach 38 million tons against the 40 million the market started the season expecting, with just 42.5 percent of cane allocated to sugar through early July.
In India, the monsoon finished 12.6 percent below average — the weakest in a decade — and the government is importing 1 million tons while forcing Maharashtra mills to start crushing two weeks early to get stock on shelves before Diwali. The next gate is 20 cents a pound: a weekly close above it puts the 2022-style deficit rally firmly in play. The risk to the bull case is Friday’s CFTC Commitments of Traders report, which will show how far fund longs have already extended.