Brazil's Centre-South hydrous ethanol sales fall over 20% in March

Hydrous ethanol sales for March in Brazil's Centre-South region decreased more than 20% year-on-year, local sugarcane industry association Unica announced on Wednesday.

This is the fourth consecutive month with a decline in the sales volume and the end of the 2015/2016 harvest period, which started on April 1, 2015 and ended on March 31 of this year.

The total volume of hydrous ethanol sold amounted to 1.12 billion litres (295.8 million gallons). On the other hand, anhydrous ethanol producers sold about 1 billion litres in March for an increase of 16.21% when compared to the same period last year.

Overall, sales of ethanol by local producers reached 29.27 billion litres during the whole 2015/2016 season, of which 27.34 billion litres were sold on the domestic market and the remaining 1.93 billion was exported.

Hydrous ethanol sales are expected to begin recovering over the next few weeks when the production costs reflect in the prices for the consumers, said Unica's director Antonio de Padua Rodrigues.

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