High crushing in Brazil, potentially low ethanol conversion in India and uptick production in Thailand have brought raw sugar pricing to its knees.
Sugar #11 or bulk sugar for internal trading lost by 3.04% daily in New York on October 13, 2025, to a 21-day low.
White sugar #5 in London’s futures similarly shed 0.8% daily to plunge to a near-lowest quotation in the past 4 1/4 years.
The dips extend seven months of near-consecutive drops in the global price benchmark for the sweetener.
This decline culminated in the FAO sugar index of October 3, 2025 at 99.4 points, a 4.1% monthly drop.
The average futures price of raw sugar in New York was at $0.16 a pound on October 13, continuing last month’s trend.
The immediate blame is on Brazil, where sugar crushing from August 15 to 31 rose to 53.49% versus late August 2024’s 47.74%.
This is happening despite Brazil’s center-south output before mid-September 2025 dipping by 0.1% year-on-year (y-o-y), to 30.4 million tonnes.
But this dip has not deterred analyst BMI Group to forecast a 2025-26 world sugar excess by 10.5 million tonnes.
Asia Sugars More
Among the sources surely fanning price woes is India, which might limit ethanol production, pushing sugar production to the limit.
According to trader Sucden, India could channel only 4 million tonnes of its sugar raw material to ethanol production. Sources cite that this diversion volume is too low to reduce the reigning surplus pressure on the sugar sector.
If ethanol does not absorb surpluses, India could up sugar exports from the 1 million tonnes it announced January 2025 to 4 million tonnes.
Production on the subcontinent is also curving up: the India Sugar Association estimates the 2025-26 output as up by 19% y-o-y, to 34.9 million tonnes.
Elsewhere, the Thai Sugar Mill Corp announced on October 1 that the national 2025-26 sugar output will rise by 5% annually.
The southeast Asia nation is a top 3 worldwide sugar producer and in 2024 emerged the second largest exporter.
An exception in Asia is the Philippines whose price plunge is not due to production gains on Negros island, but excess imports.
On October 10, 2025, the Confederation of Sugar Producers Association (CONFED) pressured the sector’s regulator to investigate sunken rates.
The PH’s wholesale sugar prices plummeted around October 10, 2025 to 2,200 pesos ($37.82) a bag from 2,800 pesos ($48.08) last year.
Thus, upward production forecasts, high crushing rates and import excesses are making world’s raw sugar pricing bearish. The stats below hunt down when the rates last saw their highest point in recent times.
Global Raw Sugar Pricing Statistics
The world’s sugar prices performed poorly in the first 10 months of 2025. This was mostly due to 2025-26 production rise forecasts, to 189.3 million tonnes or 8.6 million tonnes above 2024-25’s. Even though 2025-26’s consumption will increase by 2.49 million tonnes, to 177.92 million tonnes, it will still leave a surplus. For this reason, prices in 2025 retreated relentlessly, with the United States’ futures wallowing around $0.16/pound as of mid-October 2025.
But the retreat had its high points in the recent period from October 2023 through May 2025. The table below selectively interprets such highs from Macrotrends.
| Date | Price [$/pound] |
| June-October 2025 | 0.160 [average] |
| May 2025 | 0.174 |
| March 2025 | 0.191 |
| December 2024 | 0.203 |
| November 2024 | 0.216 |
| October 2023 | 0.269 |