At the end of April, 2018, part of our staffs, Ren Qin and Ma Li from futures department organized by CCSC joined in sugarcane research and sugar expo in Guangxi. Through the research, our staffs got a basic understanding about general state of planting of sugarcane during 17-18 crushing season in China so as to predict the output of sugarcane for the next year.

Fig. 1: research route

During the research, our staffs went to the north route and the south route divided basically by Naning for each four days. The north route: Naning north-Laibin-Liuzhou-Yizhou-Guigang; the south route: Guigang-Naning south-Baise-Chongzuo. Our staffs took the method of picking sugarcane grower to visit by random selection and mainly focused on general state of the change of planting area, crop planting, growing income and spring frost.

The result showed that those areas planted, researched by our staffs have increased to roughly 3% in varying degrees in different regions especially in Guangxi, and common sugarcane was well replaced with relatively high-sugar one. Although sugarcane growing in north route was badly affected by spring frost, most of gaps were filled with seedlings.

Fig. 2: during the research

After that research, our staffs planed to stay in Guangxi to join in the Sugar Expo. As usual, each sugar association in local region had report about general state during 2017-2018 crushing season and predicted planting area during 2018-2019 crushing season, and each government ministry talked about the relevant policy in sugar industry, and work in tackling sugar trafficking and other issues jointly conducted by China customs and the ministry of public security of China, etc.

As to the change of policy for sugar imports and auction of state-reserved sugar we were most concerned about, government ministry didn’t make it clear about what they would do. Sugar associassion raised a proposal to remove the name from the list of not fitting guarantees and also extended guaranteed period. So many merchants imported goods form those counties for 50% of quota applied instead of countries for 95% of tariff applied, which were actually not able to protect sugar industry due to fail to down to expectation. Sugar associasion also proposed that it should be strict controled on releasing state-reserved sugar so as to balance the price of sugar.

During the sugar expo, our staffs had a broad and in-depth exchange views on many issues about consumption and fundamentals with industry colleagues, and got the latest figures which would make business adjustment and further arrangement more smooth in the work of the coming days.

Fig. 3: 2018 sugar expo