Maharashtra to advance cane crushing by a month

Date 17-Jun-2010        Source Business Standard        Reporter Reuters        News Id 188

India’s top sugar producing state, Maharashtra, will start crushing from October 1, a month earlier than last year, owing to higher cane availability, a couple of government officials and an industry official told Reuters. Farmers increased the area under sugarcane in the 2009-10 planting year, attracted by the then record high sugarcane prices. The crop will be harvested in the next sugar year. The sugar year runs from October through September but crushing typically starts in November. “In 2010-11, availability of cane would be significantly higher. We are estimating a supply of 73 million tonnes compared to 62 million tonnes this year,” a senior official at the state’s Sugar Commissionerate office said on Tuesday. “To crush all the available supply, we are advancing the crushing season.” A senior official at the state government’s co-operative department confirmed the advancement of crushing and said, “We don’t want a repetition of the 2006-07 situation when the government was forced to compensate cane farmers.” In 2006-07, mills in the state failed to crush the entire cane output due to limited crushing capacity. The state is likely to produce 8.5 million tonnes of sugar in 2010-11 compared to about 7.2 million tonnes this year, Prakash Naiknavare, managing director, Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation (MSCSFF) had said earlier this month. “It will be nearly impossible for mills to crush the entire available supply next season. It is necessary to make a few more mills operational next year,” the official at the state’s co-operative department said. Reviving mills In the 2009-10 season, 141 sugar mills in the state were operational. Anticipating a bumper crop in 2010-11, the state government has decided to revive more than 50 sugar mills in the state, which were closed for the last couple of years, said Rajendra Chavan, Sugar Commissioner of the state. Higher ending stocks and early crushing will make the supply situation comfortable and drag down domestic sugar prices further, said Ashok Jain, president of the Bombay Sugar Merchants Association. He said India was unlikely to import sugar next year due to abundant supplies. India’s sugar stocks at the end of sugar year 2009-10 may stand at 4.9 million tonnes, compared to 4.4 million tonnes a year ago, the Indian Sugar Mills Association said in a statement on Monday. In Maharashtra, sugar prices have fallen over 37 per cent since a record high of Rs 3,972 on January 7, owing to an upward revision in output estimate and government curbs. “Every miller in Maharashtra wants to start crushing from October 1, but we have to see how the monsoon behaves,” said an official at MSCSFF. “If we get monsoon rains in last week of September or early October, it would be difficult for mills to commence operations.” Wet soil makes transporting cane from farms to factories difficult. Unseasonal rains in November 2009 had forced sugar millers to halt operations for more than a week.