Prices were underpinned by expectations of reduced production in top-grower Brazil, dealers said. Brazilian coffee cooperatives said in a statement on Monday that poor weather conditions would negatively affect the 2019 and 2020 crop. Dealers said prices were also supported by expectations of reduced output in Central America thanks to inadequate rain and reduced fertilizer use in the region.
Still, gains were limited by a weak Brazilian currency. The real slid to its weakest level against the US dollar in 11 months after data showed a current account deficit of $9 billion in July, far wider than the $5.9 billion shortfall forecast in a Reuters poll of economists. A weak Brazilian real encourages producer selling of dollar-denominated commodities like coffee and sugar.
December New York cocoa was unchanged from the previous session, settling at $2,238 per tonne, after earlier hitting a two-week peak of $2,279 in part on speculative short covering. Speculators hiked their net short position in cocoa on ICE Futures US in the week to August 20 to a three-month high, US government data showed on Friday.
Cocoa arrivals at ports in top grower Ivory Coast totaled 2.143 million tonnes between the beginning of the season on October 1 last year and August 25 this year, exporters estimated on Monday, up from 1.916 million tonnes in the same period last season. Above-average rain last week was expected to boost the start of Ivory Coast's October-to-March main cocoa crop but high humidity has aided the spread of disease, farmers said on Monday.
October raw sugar settled down 0.04 cent, or 0.4%, at 11.43 cents per lb. Prices have been mostly rangebound in recent sessions, caught between signals of excess near-term supply and longer-term expectations of a deficit. The European Union's crop monitoring service, MARS, on Monday cut its forecast for sugar beet yields this year, to 71.5 tonnes per hectare from 73.9 last month and 4.9% below the average of the past five years but still 3.3% above last year's drought-affected yields.