Sugar eases after contract expiry, cocoa falls

LONDON, Oct 1 (Reuters) : ICE raw sugar futures eased on Wednesday after a contract expiry seen as a bearish signal for the global market, while cocoa fell in a technical correction from near a 3-1/2-year high.
Arabica coffee futures rose, underpinned by concerns over potential damage to 2015/16 crops in Brazil due to drought.
ICE raw sugar futures fell after traders said they expected Bunge to be sole buyer of 528,655 tonnes of raw sugar from Brazil, Thailand and Central America, delivered against the October contract expiry.
A trade source said the deliverers were Noble (sugar from Santos, Brazil); Cargill (sugar from El Salvador); Dreyfus (Maceio, Brazil origin); ED&F Man (various origins); Commodity Specialists (Costa Rican and Guatemalan sugar); and ADM (Thai origin). There was no immediate official confirmation.
ICE March sugar futures were down 0.23 cents, or 1.4 per cent, at 16.22 cents a lb at 1150 GMT. They had dipped to 13.32 cents on Sept. 17, the lowest since May 2010, under pressure from huge global supplies.
"This delivery did not solve the surplus," said Claudiu Covrig, senior agricultural analyst with data provider Platts Kingsman. "It's kind of bearish."
Covrig said holders of substantial supplies of old crop Thai sugar would struggle to find markets. "It will be very hard now to place these Thais," he said.
Nick Penney, a senior trader with Sucden Financial Sugar, said the delivery, while lower than initially expected, was still fairly large.
Liffe December white sugar traded down $3.30, or 0.8 per cent, at $419.00 a tonne in thin volume of 1,491 lots.