Total ethanol production in Brazil's key center-south region during the second half of February increased 194% year on year to 8.844 million liters, industry group Unica said Monday on its website.
Hydrous ethanol in the period totaled 16.705 million liters, a drop from the 29.920 million liters produced in the same period last harvest.
Anhydrous ethanol production was minus 7.861 million liters during the period as it was increasingly converted to hydrous ethanol.
UNICA said in an email "it is common for this to happen with anhydrous ethanol." It referred to it as a "reprocessing."
A similar phenomenon was seen last year during the same two-week period, when there was a net loss of 26.907 million liters of anhydrous ethanol.
Total ethanol production from the start of the marketing year April 1 to March 1 was 25.532 billion liters, a 19.57% increase from the same period of the 2012-13 marketing year. Of that, 11.033 billion liters were anhydrous ethanol, a 25.21% increase, and 14.499 billion liters were hydrous, a 15.61% increase.
The amount of sugarcane crushed in the second half of January was 54,400 mt, a 60% drop compared with 136,000 mt during the same period last year.
From April 1 through March 1, the total volume of sugarcane processed was 596.187 million mt, an 11.95% increase from the 532.552 million mt a year earlier.
From April 1 to March 1, 54.76% of the sugarcane processed went for ethanol production, an increase from 50.46% seen during the same period last harvest.
Ethanol sales in February were 1.924 billion liters, an increase from 1.610 billion liters in February 2013. For April 1 to March 1, that figure was 23.673 billion liters, up from 20.532 billion liters a year earlier.
