Brazil mills struggling to crush cane amid rains, ports also impacted

By Marcelo Teixeira

Oct 2 (Reuters) - Brazilian mills are struggling to maintain sugarcane harvest operations at normal levels as excessive rains in the country's main center-south sugar belt hurt field work, while also impacting loadings at the main ports.

A survey by agricultural consultancy Datagro released on Friday showed that the average amount of cane crushed by a mill in the center-south fell to 76,242 metric tons in the week to September 27, down from 105,844 tons per week in early August.

"The rains impacted a lot the crushing in September," said Bruno Wanderley de Freitas, a senior economist at Datagro, adding there is more rain expected in coming days in the region that will continue to hurt harvesting.

Datagro estimates that around 35 million tons of cane will be left in the fields this year, due to the inability of mills to finish the harvest as machines suffer from working in the wet.

The El Nino climate event usually makes the southern part of Brazil wetter, while the northern part gets drier. A climate monitoring station kept by the University of Sao Paulo in the Piracicaba sugar region showed the winter period that just finished there was the wettest in 110 years.

The cane left in the fields will be processed only next year, around March.

Above-average rains in center-south Brazil are also hampering port operations, said Michael McDougall, a senior sugar analyst and industry advisor at McDougall Global View.

"It is a cascade of issues from the falling rains of El Nino," he said. Sugar prices rose as much as 5% in New York on Friday due to Brazilian rains and other production problems in Europe and Asia.

McDougall cited data from shipping brokers showing that the main sugar loading port of Santos had to stop loadings in at least 35 days in the quarter from July to September due to rains.

Since loading berths are not covered, port operators stop loading when it rains to not let sugar get wet.

The Paranagua port also had 30 stoppages in that quarter.