Three files worth the ink today, and a sugar market that moved 5.9% while nobody was looking at it.
Pakistan wants to sell India 1.2 million tonnes of sugar
A senior figure at the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association has asked Islamabad for permission to export up to 1.2 million tonnes of surplus sugar to India, the argument being that mill yards are full and the sector is short of cash. The two countries have traded almost no sugar in recent seasons, and a permit would have to clear political weather on both sides of the border before a single bag moves. The timing is loud: raw sugar #11 settled at 17.87 US cents per pound on Thursday, up from 16.87, a 5.9% day that puts the raw in the region of 394 dollars a tonne. A 1.2 million tonne overhang looking for a home is the kind of detail that gets priced quickly once it stops being a request and starts being a licence. India's own crop, meanwhile, is being stretched further by peanut intercropping in cane fields to lift oilseed output without new land.
Zambia's small miners produced 27,000 tonnes and missed the rally
Zambian government figures put first-half national copper output at 447,181 tonnes, of which large-scale operators took over 420,000 tonnes, up 4% from 404,000 a year earlier. Small-scale miners, mostly locally owned, produced roughly 27,000 tonnes, down 35% from more than 41,000 in the first half of 2025, leaving them with about 6% of national production in the strongest copper price environment they have ever seen. Part of the answer is sulphuric acid: the same desk in Lusaka has been asking this week whether large-scale mines should keep exporting acid while small operators cannot buy it. The irony sits in the feedstock print. Chinese sulphur fell 3.2% to 9,202 yuan a tonne, about 1,369 dollars, so the raw material for that acid got cheaper in the same week the tonnes went missing. Copper itself gave back 2.0% on COMEX to 6.469 dollars a pound, 14,262 a tonne, as exchange inventories rose 50% and eased the squeeze.
SABIC AN and Ma'aden agree to talk, urea adds 5%
Saudi Arabia's two nitrogen houses have signed up to explore collaboration across the fertilizer value chain, which for now is a memorandum rather than a tonne. What is not a memorandum: urea gained 5.0% on the day to 410 dollars a tonne, its sharpest single move of the month, while DAP slipped 0.3% to 792.50. Any consolidation of granular urea supply out of Jubail and Ras Al Khair matters to East African buyers who take Gulf product on short voyage and thin cover, and it matters more when the price is already climbing into the northern hemisphere autumn application window.
The tape
CBOT wheat closed at 700 cents a bushel, up 3.7% at 257 dollars a tonne, on a week when analysts described Chinese and Indian summer crops as mostly good. RBOB gasoline fell 9.4% to 2.9636 dollars a gallon while Brent rose 3.4% to 93.96 a barrel, a refining margin unwinding in one session. The Baltic Dry lost 39 points to 2,776. Cobalt was unchanged at 56,290 dollars a tonne. SQM booked revenue of 4,228.5 million dollars for the first half on record lithium volumes. Kamoa Copper signed a 16.9 million dollar, five-project community charter for 2026-2030 at Mutshatsha in Lualaba. More than 100 people died in a gold mine collapse in the Central African Republic near the Cameroon border.