Brazil sugarcane, ethanol set production record

HOUSTON (ICIS)–Brazil’s centre-south region set records for it annual sugarcane crush and ethanol production between April 2015 and March 2016, trade group UNICA said on Tuesday.

Crushing produced 617.65m tonnes of sugarcane, an increase of almost 8% compared with 573.14m tonnes processed in 2014-2015. Final ethanol production totaled 28.22bn litres, almost 2.0bn litres more than the previous historic high.

Anhydrous ethanol made up 10.64bn litres produced, with hydrous ethanol accounting for 17.58 bn litres. Hydrous showed a significant increase of 13.47% compared with 15.49bn litres recorded in the previous crop year.

“The favourable weather conditions for the development of the plant has expanded the availability of raw material, allowing a significant increase in the crushing for the 2015-2016 crop,” Antonio de Padua Rodrigues, UNICA’s technical director, said in the report.

Ethanol sales by mills in the centre-south region in March totaled 2.24bn litres, 13.42% down from the 2.57bn litres recorded the same month last year.

This drop was caused mainly because of the decrease of more than 20% in domestic sales of hydrous ethanol – 1.12bn litres in March compared with 1.45bn litres for the same month in 2015.

On the other hand, domestic sales of anhydrous ethanol rose by 16.21% – 1.0bn litres up from 863.2m litres in March last year.

Despite the decline in March sales, the accumulated volume, including from past seasons, sold by the mills and distilleries in the centre-south region from April 2015 to March 2016 totaled 29.27bn litres, a significant growth of 16.26% over the same period during last season.

Of this amount, 27.34bn litres were designated for the domestic market. Of that, 17.34bn litres was hydrous ethanol – an increase of 23.34% compared with 14.06bn litres last season. The remaining 10.00bn litres correspond to domestic sales of anhydrous ethanol – about the same as  the 9.62bn litres in the previous crop.