SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Sugar cane crushing in Brazil’s center-south region during the first half of March fell almost 18% to 1.83 million metric tons versus the year-earlier period, industry group Unica said in a report published on Thursday.
Sugar production in the region during the same period was down 19% to 52,000 tons, Unica said, while ethanol production was up some 20% at 442 million liters.
Nineteen processing units started the 2025/26 harvest early during the first two weeks of March. In Brazil’s center-south region, the harvest officially begins in April.
At the end of the fortnight, 37 production units were operating in the region, Unica said, specifying that 22 processed sugarcane, 10 produced ethanol from corn and five were flex plants.
At least 19 other production units plan to restart operations in the second half of the month “but this schedule may change depending on the climate and operational conditions in each sugarcane region,” Unica’s sector intelligence director, Luciano Rodrigues, said in the report.
(Reporting by Roberto Samora and Gabriel Araujo; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Kylie Madry)
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