Sugar Industry Insights (Feb 25, 2020)
Last few years sugar industry has been a beneficiary of government largesse. Sugar cycle turned in 2015. Post that there has been surplus production.

Government has helped the industry by various incentives like export subsidy, ethanol blending, allowing cane juice to ethanol conversion, msp, etc. UP and Maharashtra are the 2 major states in sugarcane plantations.
The 2 largest players in the world are Brazil and India. In Brazil sugarcane is used for ethanol a lot lot more than in India. Brazil is way ahead of any country in ethanol from cane.
US is the largest producer of ethanol in the world followed by Brazil. US uses mainly corn for making ethanol.
Indian sugar scenario: Sugar still constitutes 85% of revenue in sugar companies. So, essentially it has to do well for sugar companies to be profitable. We have had record production in last couple of years. Sugar opening stock at end of last sugar year was 14.5 mt.
Indian consumption is 25-26mt. This year production will be 26-27 mt. Some of the surplus will be removed due to export (which the government is giving subsidy for). Some due to diversion to ethanol, where government has been a big enabler and provided good prices.
I expect this year to end at inventory of 9.5-10 mt. Expectations of a good crop for next year is again high due to reservoirs being full.

We have to understand that sugar story depends on government help a lot. It does remain a political commodity.
The risks to sugar story are:

1)High production next year
2)Current year production above the industry expectation of 26 mt (for UP one can get data as most are listed, but for Mah it is difficult as there are many private players and co-operatives)
3)Government doesn’t support by the way of export subsidy as expected by the industry
4)Crude falls, to let’s say, 40-50$. The whole ethanol story becomes very difficult. Brazil also starts diverting cane to sugar instead of ethanol
5)Government increases price of sugarcane, as UP elections will be in 2022
6)Government removes MSP
My view: One should not change narrative of investment reasons post entering the sector/stock. If you have invested because of sugar cycle, stay invested or exit, due to that reason only. If sugar doesn’t do well, I don’t think other ancillaries can save the pain.
Best time to enter sugar was in 2015 when cycle turn was evident. That’s when you make big returns. I got a 7x return in next 18 months. Post that in mid-cycle it has always been trading calls, where you are playing for percentage returns.
Remember: When downcycle turns into upcycle you make “X” returns, in mid-cycle you make “%age” returns.

More from Jiten Parmar

More from Sugar

You May Also Like

This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.