US ethanol exports head to Brazil as mills focus on sugar production

In Brazil, high sugar prices have mills responding in kind to crank out more of the sweetener, leaving less cane juice for ethanol production that is in turn provoking import demand from the US outside the traditional inter-harvest period when US ethanol imports have been fairly common. With US ethanol prices at three-month lows thanks to producers pumping out record levels of fuel mixed with a weak dollar has seen arbitrage opportunities open up to Brazil’s northeast.