SAO PAULO, March 19 (Reuters) - Brazil's 2014/15 sugar canecrop that has started early crushing in the south will sufferlosses on average of 5 percent to 10 percent from recent dryweather this year, the Chief Financial Officer of Raizen, PedroMizutani, said on local TV.
Speaking at an agricultural event televised by the BioenergyProducers Association (Udop) on Wednesday, Mizutani said rainshave returned in March to the cane-growing area of center-southBrazil but the risk will be rains in May and June.
Mizutani said Raizen, the world's largest sugar and ethanolproducer, will start harvesting in April on schedule 60 millionto 62 million tonnes of cane, unchanged from last year when it churned out 2.2 billion liters of ethanol and 4.4 million tonnesof sugar.
Raizen is a joint venture between Brazil's Cosan and Royal-Dutch Shell Plc.
The company had hoped to reach 65 million tonnes of canecrushed this season but the drought in January and February haspushed that goal back at least another year.
Mizutani said the risk to the sugar sector is any delay incrushing.
"It is looking more and more like an El Nino year, whichmeans a rainier dry season," he said. "The risk is if it rainsin May and June, when you've got cane but can't harvest."
Mizutani said rains had returned to the cane belt in March,albeit below average for the month.
He said damage to the cane belt due to the drought inJanuary depended on the region, with some areas suffering nolosses and others likely to see as much as a 12 percent drop incane this season.
He added that while mills in Goias state have suffered nolosses due to dry weather, the region of Piracicaba, a key sugarcane producing region in Sao Paulo state, suffered losses of 10percent.
Mizutani did not say how big Raizen thought the newcenter-south cane crop would be but local analysts have beenlowering their expectations of the crop recently to between 570million and 595 million tonnes, after crushing 596 milliontonnes over the past year. (Reporting by Reese Ewing; Editing by James Dalgleish)
