Dubai sugar refinery plans to raise storage capacity

The Al Khaleej Dubai sugar refinery plans to increase its raw sugar storage capacity to 1.5 million tonnes from 1 million tonnes by the end of this year, a senior executive said.

"We will increase the storage of raw sugar to 1.5 million tonnes by the end of 2010," Jamal Al Ghurair said on the sidelines of the Kingsman Dubai sugar conference yesterday. As part of the company's expansion plan, Al Khaleej is also doubling its white sugar packaging capacity to 8,000 tonnes per day by the end of February, he added.

Meanwhile, Consultancy Kingsman forecast a 2010-2011 (April-March) global sugar surplus of 3.99 million tonnes, against a deficit for 2009-2010 of 11.92 million tonnes. It was Kingsman's first forecast for the global 2010-2011 sugar supply/demand balance. Previously, Lausanne-based Kingsman had forecast a 2009-2010 deficit of 8.3 million tonnes.

Kingsman said the new centre-south Brazilian harvest was expected to produce 33.8 million tonnes of sugar, up 5.4 million from the previous year.

Brazil is the world's biggest sugar producer and exporter.

India is the largest consumer of sugar with any deficit in the "essential commodity" building into a major political issue.

"But [Kingsman] warned that if rains continue through April the industry will have difficulty in achieving this (2010/11 centre-south Brazil) figure," the statement said.

In an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the Dubai conference, Jonathan Kingsman, managing director of Kingsman SA, said he saw very limited impact from fungal disease (orange rust) on the 2010/11 centre-south Brazilian cane crop.

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