LONDON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Cocoa futures on ICE traded at 1-1/2-year highs on Wednesday on technical signs of nearby supply tightness and as some buyers snapped up cocoa ahead of next season, when Ivory Coast and Ghana will charge a farmer premium for their beans.
Raw sugar prices hit their highest in a month.
* March New York cocoa rose $19, or 0.7%, to $2,639 a tonne by 1348 GMT, having hit its highest since late May last year at $2,656.
* March London cocoa rose by 5 pounds, or 0.3%, to 1,939 pounds a tonne, having hit its highest since mid-May last year at 1,949.
* London December cocoa last traded near a record 96 pounds a tonne above March cocoa LCCZ9-H0, indicating nearby supplies might be tight.
* New York December cocoa traded near a record $11 a tonne above March cocoa.
* Further out, however, the outlook for the main crop in top producer Ivory Coast remains generally favourable.
* “It is possible the high buying interest is also due to the additional price premium of $400 per tonne that will have to be paid by buyers of cocoa from Ivory Coast and Ghana – on top of the market price – from next crop year,” Commerzbank said in a note.
* Ghana, the world’s No. 2 cocoa producer, has sold nearly 200,000 tonnes of cocoa for the 2020/21 season, with prices including the new $400 per tonne living income differential.
* March raw sugar rose by 0.19 cent, or 1.5%, to 12.78 cents per lb, having hit its highest since early October at 12.79.
* Sugar production estimates for 2019/20 are being cut back in many producing regions, with most global deficit estimates now between 6 million and 7 million tonnes.
* This means prices should eventually break out on the upside, though gains will likely be capped along the way by producer selling of excess stocks from last season.
* German sugar industry association WVZ lowered its forecast for refined sugar production in the current 2019/20 season to 4.20 million tonnes from 4.22 million.
* December white sugar rose by $3.80, or 1.2%, to $331.30 a tonne.
* March arabica coffee was up 1.50 cents, or 1.4%, at $1.1040 per lb.
* Brazil exported 3.1 million 60-kg bags of green coffee in October, 14% less than a year earlier, as a smaller crop this year starts to impact monthly exporting volumes.
* China’s Luckin Coffee reported a more than six-fold increase in quarterly revenue on Wednesday, as the Starbucks rival opened stores and pulled in new customers.
* January robusta coffee rose $10, or 0.7%, at $1,382 per tonne.
* Vietnam, the world’s top robusta producer, exported 87,497 tonnes, or 1.46 million 60-kg bags, of coffee, in October, down 5.3% from September.
Editing by Dale Hudson