Raw Sugar
ICE
The world's sweetener benchmark, priced off Brazilian cane mills that can make fuel instead.
Top Producers
share of 2025/26 world sugar production
Top Consumers
share of 2025/26 world sugar consumption
Main Uses
world sugar use by category (raw, Brazil-weighted)
Top Exporters
share of 2025/26 sugar exports
Top Importers
share of 2025/26 sugar imports
World production
roughly 180 million tonnes
as of 2025
Brazil's share of raw sugar exports
roughly 70 percent
as of 2025
All-time high
roughly 66 cents per pound (November 1974)
as of 2025
2023 high / 2025 low
roughly 28 cents / roughly 14 to 16 cents per pound
as of 2025
Raw sugar is the unrefined product of cane mills, the brown crystalline feedstock that refineries turn into white sugar, and the ICE Sugar No. 11 contract in New York is the price benchmark for the roughly 180 million tonnes of sugar the world produces each year. Brazil rules the export market: its Centre-South cane belt crushes more than 600 million tonnes of cane a season and supplies roughly 70 percent of globally traded raw sugar. The defining feature of the market is that Brazilian mills are dual-fuel factories. Every tonne of cane can become either sugar or hydrous ethanol for Brazil's flex-fuel car fleet, and mills adjust the production mix season by season. That makes Brazilian gasoline prices, Petrobras pricing policy, and ultimately crude oil a floor mechanism under world sugar: when ethanol pays better than sugar exports, the sugar supply shrinks.
The other half of the market is Asian policy. India is the world's second producer and a chronically unpredictable exporter, swinging between subsidized export surpluses and outright export bans, as in the restrictions it imposed from October 2023 while diverting cane to its own ethanol program. Thailand is the second-largest exporter; China and Indonesia are the big importers. Prices ran to a 12-year high around 28 cents per pound in late 2023 on Indian restrictions and a poor Thai crop, then fell by roughly half through 2025 as record Brazilian harvests and an Indian export return rebuilt the surplus. The No. 11 contract is 112,000 pounds (50 long tons), quoted in cents per pound, physically delivered free-on-board at ports in the producing country, one of the few FOB-origin delivery contracts in commodities, and its March, May, July, and October expiries can produce huge delivery tenders, frequently dominated by a single trade house.
How It Trades
| Venue | ICE Futures U.S. (New York) |
| Benchmark contract | Sugar No. 11 futures (SB) |
| Contract size | 112,000 pounds (50 long tons) |
| Price terms | US cents per pound |
| Settlement | Physical delivery, free-on-board vessel at a port in the producing country |
| Typical curve | Contango in surplus years; inversion when Indian export bans or Brazilian crop failures tighten nearby supply |
| Liquidity | The deepest soft-commodity future; routinely above 100,000 contracts a day with very large delivery tenders |
Where It Trades
approximate share of global sugar futures volume, 2025
Supply and Demand
Top producers
- Brazil: roughly 40 to 45 million tonnes, roughly 70 percent of world raw sugar exports
- India: roughly 30 to 34 million tonnes, exports hostage to policy
- European Union: roughly 15 million tonnes (beet sugar, mostly consumed internally)
- Thailand: roughly 10 to 11 million tonnes, the second-largest exporter
- China: roughly 10 million tonnes, a structural importer despite large output
Brazil's Centre-South harvest runs April through November; the mills' sugar-versus-ethanol mix decision is the world's marginal supply lever.
Top consumers
- India (largest consumer)
- European Union
- China (largest importer alongside Indonesia)
- United States
- Indonesia
Major uses
- Food and beverage sweetening, the overwhelming use
- Refining feedstock for white sugar
- Fermentation and industrial uses
What Moves the Price
- Brazilian Centre-South cane crush, sucrose content, and the sugar-versus-ethanol production mix
- Brazilian ethanol parity: gasoline prices, Petrobras policy, and crude oil
- Indian monsoon outcomes, cane diversion to ethanol, and export policy
- Thai crop size and Chinese import licensing
- The Brazilian real, which sets mill export economics
- Freight rates, since the contract delivers FOB origin
- Speculative positioning, with sugar a favorite macro expression for fund flows
Moments That Made the Market
1914
New York sugar futures begin trading on the Coffee Exchange, ancestor of today's No. 11.
1974
The great sugar crisis: prices touch roughly 66 cents per pound, still the all-time record.
2010
Supply deficits drive sugar above 30 cents per pound, then the highest in three decades.
2011
A second spike above 35 cents marks the top of the supercycle sugar market.
2023
Indian export restrictions and a weak Thai crop lift sugar to a 12-year high around 28 cents per pound.
2024-2025
Record Brazilian crushes rebuild the surplus; prices fall to the mid-teens in cents per pound.
What Changed Since the 2010 Handbook Era
- Brazil's ethanol program matured into the structural price floor for world sugar, hard-wiring sugar to energy markets.
- India shifted from swing exporter to policy-driven wildcard, diverting growing cane volumes into its own ethanol blending program.
- EU production shrank after the 2017 quota abolition shakeout, removing the old subsidized export overhang of the 2000s.
- Health policy (sugar taxes in dozens of countries) flattened consumption growth in developed markets.
- High-frequency mill data and satellite crush monitoring made the Brazilian harvest the most transparent crop in the softs.