IKAR in Mass Media

Russian production surges, slashing imports

16 февраля 2017 года

It wasn’t all about India at this week’s Dubai conference; Russia and Ukraine were also talking points as both countries ramp up production and exports this season.

Continuing to exceed expectations and forecasts the Russian sugar season looks set to continue on for a few weeks to come, thanks to a bumper harvest. In the week ending February 13, six factories are still operating, up from two factories a year earlier, according to data from IKAR. Out of the six units still crushing, five are in the Central region while one unit is operational in the Altay region. Over 99% of the beet available for harvest has already been processed based on the latest data. In 2015-16 (August-September) Russia processed 34.3 million mt of beet and produced 5.17 million mt of sugar.

During the current 2016-17 season cumulative sugar production to date has already touched 6.05 million mttq from 46 million mt of beet. This leaves a further 218,500 mt of beet still remaining to be processed based on data released by IKAR. Given this and stable sugar yields, we estimate Russian sugar production will reach 6.08 million mt in 2016-17, up 18% on the year. Sugar yields from the beetprocessed during the tail of the harvest have pushed the season average down by about 50 basis points to 13.55%.

Whilst forecasts remain for Ukraine to export around 500,000 mt this season, with most of the tonnage already shipped, the question being asked is how much can Russia export? The current range of estimates is wide at 100,000-500,000 mt. Unlike Ukraine though, Russia has in the past relied heavily on imports to satisfy its domestic demand, for which estimates range between 5.6 million and 5.7 million mt. Given this, and current production of 6.08 million mt it is more likely that exports could perhaps be around 150,000-200,000 mt still a steep jump from the average 10,000-20,000 mt. The production surplus during 2016-17 also calls the average imports in the past years by Russia of about 600,000-700,000 mt into question. Over August 2016-February 2017, imports so have been just 25,000 mt as compared with 147,000 mt a year earlier.