Sugar mills across the country produced 305.68 lakh tonnes (lt) of sugar till May 31, nearly 13.2 per cent more than 270 lt produced during the same period last year, Indian Sugar Mills Association said on Tuesday.

This season’s sugar production is almost over with only seven mills – three in Tamil Nadu and four in Uttar Pradesh – still crushing sugarcane. Mills in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, however, will have a brief special sugarcane crushing season later this year like they did last year. Last year, these special sessions yielded a little more than 3 lt of sugar.

Mills in UP produced 110.16 lt of sugar this year so far which was 15.3 lt lower than last year. Maharashtra, on the other hand, produced 106.28 lt of sugar, about 44.6 lt more than that last year, in which quality of cane was affected due to drought. Karnataka mills produced 41.67 lt of sugar as compared to 33.8 lt same period last year.

Current crushing season in the Western UP got prolonged by a few days as most of the Gur / Khandsari units have closed their operations due to lockdown restrictions, resulting in the diversion of cane that would have gone to them to the sugar mills.

In Tamil Nadu, sugar mills produced 6.52 lt, which is 10 per cent more than that in the previous season. Like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu too will have a special season during June-September period. All other sugar-producing States put together produced 41.05 lt of sugar till May 31, ISMA said.

As per port information and market reports, export contracts for 58 lt of sugar against Maximum Admissible Export Quota (MAEQ) of 60 lt of sugar have already been entered into so far. It is also estimated that almost 44-45 lt of sugar would have been exported already between January and May months. In addition, the sugar industry exported 4.48 lt of sugar in Oct- Dec 2020 quarter against the MAEQ of the previous sugar season.

On the ethanol front, against the total quantity of 346.52 crore litres, 321.18 crore litres have been contracted for and 145.38 crore litres of ethanol have been supplied till May 24. Oil marketing companies on May 25 floated the fourth cycle of Expression of Interest (EOI), inviting further bids from ethanol producers for another about 26 crore litres of ethanol in the current year 2020-21.

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