Positivity surrounding the anticipated recovery for South Africa’s sugarcane harvest during the current 2025-’26 milling season is being soured by unfair competition from increasing imports of cheap sugar and by the USA’s imminent 30% import tariff on all South African products.
By Lloyd Phillips, senior journalist at African Farming and Landbouweekblad
After drier than normal conditions resulted in South Africa’s approximately 25 000 growers delivering 16,47 million tons sugarcane – the lowest in eight consecutive seasons – during the 2024-’25 milling season, the latest estimate for the current 2025-’26 season is 17,7 million tons sugarcane delivered.
“While this recovery in yield is welcome news, our industry’s economic outlook remains under serious threat due to delays in adjusting South Africa’s tariff on imported sugar, the resultant flood of cheap sugar imports into our country, and the looming 30% import tariff by the United States on South African sugar exports,” says Higgins Mdluli, chairperson of the South African Canegrowers Association.
South Africa’s imports of duty-paid sugar from outside the Southern African Customs Union quadrupled from approximately 25 000 tons in the 2023-’24 season to approximately 100 000 tons in the 2024-’25 season. These imports, in turn, displace South African sugar onto generally loss-making world sugar markets.
Mdluli has previously stated that South Africa’s primary sugarcane value-chain loses approximately R6 000 potential income from every ton of its sugar that is so displaced.
Also read: Trump tariffs will sour 63 years of SA sugar exports to the US
Also previously reported is that the USA’s imminent 30% import tariff on all South African products will nullify the valuable price benefits achieved from South African’s many decades of sugar exports to the USA.
“We urge South Africa’s government to move swiftly to revise the duty on sugar imports to be in line with current global prices, and to prioritise a new trade agreement with the USA that safeguards our export potential,” Mdluli says.
