Investors are fleeing. Yields on bonds issued by sugar and ethanol maker Grupo Virgolino de Oliveira SA surged 12.34 percentage points this year to 22.313 percent as of Dec. 17, compared with an average gain of 0.7 percentage point for high-yield emerging market corporate bonds. Yield gains for Aralco SA Acucar & Alcool bonds issued this year were almost 16 times more than the average increase for emerging market bonds, while Tonon Bioenergia SA was almost six times more.
Demand for ethanol fell 16 percent last year from a 2010 peak, according to data from Bloomberg Industries. Spending for new ethanol mills in Latin America’s biggest economy will shrink to $321 million this year, down from a peak of $7.6 billion in 2008, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates.
“It’s hard to see how these assets are going to be profitable,” Toby Cohen, a director at Czarnikow Group Ltd., which traded 2.4 million metric tons of raw sugar last year and had $3 billion of trading revenue, said by telephone from London on Dec. 4.