Improved Sugar Production Crucial for Next Season
04-Aug-2025 06:03 PM
Mumbai. After balancing demand and supply, the outstanding surplus stock of sugar with the indigenous industry is likely to come down to below 50 lakh tonnes at the end of the current marketing season.
The current marketing season of sugar started in October 2024, which will end on 30 September 2025 and the new marketing season of 2025-26 will start from 1 October.
According to official data, on 31 July 2025, the Indian industry had a stock of 90.58 lakh tonnes of sugar, out of which a quota of 22.50 lakh tonnes was released for domestic sale in the month of August.
As a result, the industry will be left with a stock of 68 lakh tonnes at the end of August. If the same quota is announced for September as well, then the stock will further decrease to around 45.50 lakh tonnes at the end of the current marketing season.
This time festivals like Navratri, Dussehra and Deepawali will be celebrated in September-October only and hence there is a strong possibility of increasing the sugar quota especially in October.
If this quota comes up to 25 lakh tonnes, then by the end of October, the industry may have only 20-21 lakh tonnes of sugar left in stock.
Usually, the sugarcane crushing and sugar production season starts from October but often it has been the practice to start from the third-fourth week of October in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka and from the first week of November (after Deepawali) in Maharashtra.
But this time the situation seems to be different, hence the millers may be asked to start sugarcane crushing early. This is also necessary.
Domestic sugar production is estimated to decline by 18 per cent to 261 lakh tonnes in the 2024-25 season (October-September) as compared to 319 lakh tonnes in the 2023-24 season, which could not increase its availability much, while the industry had a huge backlog of 79 lakh tonnes of sugar at the beginning of the season.
Permission to export 10 lakh tonnes of sugar also made some difference. Overall, the sugar stock will be very low this time and hence it is very important to increase production in the 2025-26 season.