Sugar Market.

Cromwell Argus, Volume LX, Issue 3111, 12 May 1930, Page 6

Sugar Market.

London is probably the largest market in the world for dealings in actual sugar, and last year over three million tons were bought and sold on the London terminal market alone, although the market has been handicapped by having to change its contracts from white to raw sugar. Often thousands of tons are bought and sold in the space of a few hours without prices in the market rising by more than ijd per hundredweight, and just as often without any difference in price at all (says the 'Port of London Authoritv Monthly"). London is now importing sugar to the extent of about a million tons per annum, and the various warehouses in the port aie capable of storing more than halt of the quantity, and have done so; and cargoes are being landed more expeditiously and landing supervised better, perhaps, than in any other port in the world. One often hears the ill-informed speak of terminal markets in disparaging terms, and one occasionally hears statements to the effect that they are useless to the production of the commodity they represent. It would be futile to argue that under the ideal condition of stabilised prices year in and year out producer and consumer could have any use for the terminal market. Under modern conditions •such an ideal state of affairs is impossible, and it is equally impossible to visualise any conditions where such a state of affairs can ever exist (unJess man learns how to control the weather and many other things as. well), because there will always be years of plenty, followed by years, of shortage; the law of supply and demand seems immutable. For the past year or two the sugar trade has been suffering from over-production—among other things. I attended a lecture given recently by Mr Lewis Kynon, at the Institute of Chemistry, in the course of which he stated that it seems probable that power alcohol will eventually tyke the place of petrol, and that four tons of sugar fa moderate? estimate of the yield per acre under cane), will produce about }2o gallons of alcohol, sufficient to propel two modern light cars about 8000 miles. Each car would, therefore, use as much sugar as is eaten by fifty people in this country in the course of a year. One can imagine offering assistance (in a Jfew years time) to a stranded motorist who apologises for himself with "I'm afraid my wife forgot the sugar basin !"