Coronavirus concerns aside, no resurgence in Australia’s cane and sugar output from last year’s disappointing level is foreseen in 2020.
As shown in the table, cane production is thought likely to remain close to last year’s tally and reach 30 mln tonnes. This assessment is based on our understanding of no increase in overall cane area, weather impacts (e.g. the Herbert crop is showing the impact of last year’s floods and in the South – routed by drought last year - recent rains might have come too late to be beneficial) and prospective yields. In the dominant Queensland industry, most regions will likely not fare much better than last year and all up, Queensland’s cane crop is put at 28.4 mln tonnes. For the NSW crop, the lingering impacts of last year’s drought conditions is likely to prevent any improvement over 1.6 mln tonnes seen last season. As such, the early expectation for the Australian industry is for sugarcane production to stagnate at last year’s level of 30.0 mln tonnes. At worse, tonnage could contract a little.
Meanwhile, Coronavirus Could Impact the Harvest
Like in Brazil’s Centre/South, Australia’s cane cutting is a highly mechanised process suggesting the harvest by the nation’s cane farmers can proceed even with the coronavirus outbreak. A heavy reliance on diesel trains moving cane in bins should also help ensure uninterrupted cane supplies to mills. However, for the Australian industry perhaps the biggest challenge will be completing mill maintenance programs before the normal crush start-up (June).
2019 Cane Production was Disappointing….
The 2019 crush yielded almost 6.5 mln tonnes cane less than that seen only a few years ago in 2016. In particular, cane yield/ha has declined in the intervening period due to weather and disease impacts. In fact, in 2016, even though cane tonnage was 36.5 mln tonnes, cane area was down round 10,000 ha from the previous season, but cane yield was high at 98.3 tonnes/ha. Furthermore, 2019 saw the worst cane crush since 2012 when 30.0 mln tonnes were processed.
Last month the Australian Sugar Milling Council (ASMC) revealed a worrying reduction in both cropping area and sugarcane yield across all Queensland regions in 2019. The Queensland sugarcane crop for 2019 was 28.4 mln tonnes, down 6.7% from the 30.4 mln tonnes achieved in 2018 and some six mln tonnes less than the 2016 crop of 34.4 mln tonnes (-17.4%). The crop area harvested was also down 16,388 ha across the State’s sugar regions last year (350,082 ha in 2019 compared to 366,470 ha in 2018).
Cane yields (tonnes cane/harvested ha) were also lower in 2019 when compared to the average result for the past eight years (2012-2018) across every Queensland sugarcane production region.
… With a 7-Year Low in Sugar Production
Australia’s sugar production reached 4.3 mln tonnes tel quel in 2019 - 9% lower than the previous year’s tally of 4.7 mln tonnes. This was the worst industry performance since 2012 when 4.2 mln tonnes sugar was achieved. Output was even lower in 2010 and 2011 when 3.4 mln tonnes and 3.7 mln tonnes respectively of sugar were produced. Given average sugar yields and recoveries sugar production in 2020 could come in little changed at around 4.2 mln tonnes (assuming cane output of 30.4 mln tonnes).
