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By: Yi Tian, Bloomberg.com

U.S. sugar supplies are adequate this year, and the approaching harvests will allow enough time to determine whether government import quotas should be lifted to slow a surge in prices, Imperial Sugar Co. executives said.

“There’s really no overall shortage of sugar in the marketplace,” said Patrick Henneberry, a senior vice president for commodities management at Sugar Land, Texas-based Imperial, the largest U.S. sugar refiner. Stockpiles will only be used if the harvests, which usually start in September, are delayed, he said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Raw sugar for world consumption jumped 89 percent this year through yesterday, reaching a 28-year high on Aug. 12, as adverse weather limits cane crops in India and Brazil. That prompted companies including Kraft Foods Inc., General Mills Inc. and ConAgra Foods Inc. to ask the government to raise import limits so they can buy more supplies from Brazil and other exporters at cheaper prices than domestic sugar.

The USDA this week said there’s no need to act now and that the market “will be adequately supplied.”

The department will have “more than enough time” to adjust to U.S. and Mexico output when harvests are completed in April, Imperial’s Chief Executive Officer John C. Sheptor said in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Now is a time to have constraint, to allow crops to be harvested to see what the yields and production will be,” said Sheptor, 51. “The USDA is taking appropriate action by waiting to see the quality of the harvest.”

September Harvests

Farmers in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa will begin collecting sugar beets next month, and the harvest of the cane crop, mainly grown in Louisiana and Florida, will start about the same time. Mexico will start harvesting in December.

There were concerns that the U.S. market would face tight supplies in the year ending Sept. 30 after Imperial’s refinery in Wentworth, Georgia, was damaged by fire in February 2008, said Henneberry, 55. A 10 percent drop in U.S. beet-sugar output also pressured the market.

Shipments from Mexico, the only country exempt from import restrictions designed to benefit domestic producers, “completely made up for our plant being down and the smaller beet crop,” Henneberry said.

The Wentworth plant, which shut after an explosion killed 14 people, will operate at full capacity as early as October, adding more than 800,000 metric tons of the sweetener to the market annually, Sheptor said.

On ICE Futures U.S. in New York, raw sugar for October deliver rose 0.2 cent to 22.57 cents a pound at 10:26 a.m., after reaching a 28-year high of 23.33 cents this month. U.S. futures, which serve domestic producers and users, have gained 36 percent this year.

“Anything that’s not produced now will create tightness in the global market for approximately 12 months,” Sheptor said. “Certainly, there are good reasons for the buyers of sugar to be aware that this is a tight-production year versus demand. We’re clearly on the ramp-up of futures prices.”