A.S.R./B.S.I. Remains Globally Competitive

A.S.R./B.S.I. is also monitoring the global market and the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. McLachlan says that B.S.I. has made continuous investments to ensure that the industry remains competitive in the world sugar market. He says that on the factory side, phased expansion, to increase production capacity of value-added direct consumption sugars, continues. That is because direct consumption sugars attract a considerably higher premium than raw sugars and are more marketable because they require no additional processing. 

Mac McLachlan, VP, International Relations, A.S.R./B.S.I

Mac McLachlan

“Shipping costs are largely  reflected in oil prices generally and as we discussed earlier the amount of time that vessels have to wait to be loaded. As far as the pandemic is concerned, I suppose things that we are watching, the trends is sugar consumption, what is actually happening. We are finding that there is an increase in retail sales of sugar meaning that people are using more sugar at home whereas industrious users of sugar are probably using less sugar. I haven’t seen any major issues that would alter the equilibrium dramatically. We are always beholden as a sugar industry to global sugar prices. This is one of the issues. It turns out again this year there is going to be a global surplus of sugar. Indian has about six million tons of sugar to export on the global market. They are just waiting for the right opportunity. That is going to keep prices depressed unfortunately and basically we took maybe investment that we made to move into sugars that can attract higher premiums because they don’t need to be refined once they get to their destinations and they generally attract a higher premium. That is why we have been a lot of effort over the last four years in that area.”