The October London white sugar contract expired with just under 500,000 tonnes delivered, pending final exchange confirmation. The same expiry a year earlier moved more than 1.5 million tonnes. The physical market that showed up against the board this October was a fraction of the one that showed up in 2025.
Prices have come off their highs without giving much back. NY11 raw sugar reached 18.73 US cents per pound, a level last seen in the first quarter of 2025, before easing to 17.94 cents on the October contract on 15 September. December London white sugar rose to $522 a tonne. Producers were hedging into the highs, which is the usual brake on a move like this.
Speculative money went the other way. In the CFTC update for the week ending 8 September, ICE sugar speculators raised their net long by 33,676 contracts to 106,116 lots, a position last seen in 2023. That is a large long to be carrying into a market where fundamentals are still being written.
The supply side is what they are buying. DG AGRI forecasts European output at 13.4 million tonnes in 2026/27, close to 20% below last season, with ending stocks falling to 2.32 million tonnes from 3.06 million. The Thai Sugar Millers Corporation puts 2026/27 output below 10 million tonnes against 12 million last season, on drought in the northeast and better returns from cassava. In Brazil the cane crush is running slightly ahead of last year but sugar output is not, and August exports fell 28% year-on-year to 2.697 million tonnes.
Energy is pulling on the same rope. Crude oil has revisited $100 a barrel after an Iran-backed attack on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, with the Strait of Hormuz still restricted. Expensive oil moves cane economics toward ethanol, diverting cane away from sugar. Hydrous ethanol in Sao Paulo was priced at 0.4821 USD per litre in the CEPEA update to 11 September, up 3.19% on the week and up 20% since the start of August.
Sitting behind all of it is the WMO’s latest read, which has the current El Nino intensifying and lingering into at least February 2027. Vesper’s global sugar analysis works through what that does to the balance from here.
