London, Feb 6 - London white sugar futures rallied to a three-month peak on fund and investment buying on Friday, while a weak dollar drove up U.S. cocoa futures and the London market followed against a backdrop of tight supplies.
Arabica coffee futures eased and London robustas firmed in light activity dominated by rollover business, with traders sensing that arabicas could outperform robustas due to expectations of tighter supplies in Brazil.
In London benchmark March white sugar futures hit a session peak of $387.00 per tonne, the highest on a front-month continuation basis since November 7.
March was up $7.1 or 1.9 percent to $385.30 per tonne in modest volume of 1,027 lots at 1240 GMT.
"The funds are on the buy tack and the bulls will support dips to 13.00 (cents a lb)," UK broker Sucden said in a daily report.
"Thus, the next stop should be the 13.30 area."
ICE March raw sugar was up 0.14 cent to 13.12 cents per lb at 1242 GMT.
Dealers assessed Indian import requirements after the country opened its doors to duty free sugar imports. They also digested a report of an Iraqi buying tender, but noted that the tonnage was not large enough to have a market impact.
Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd, India's biggest refiner, may import up to 500,000 tonnes of raws by the end of the season in September after rules were relaxed, its managing director said on Friday.
Iraq's state-run Food Stuff Company has issued a tender to buy at least 12,500 tonnes of white crystal sugar of all origins except Indian, traders said on Friday.
Australia's sugar harvest could be up by around 15 percent in the year ahead despite damage to cane crops in the main growing state of Queensland, Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd said in a research note on Friday.
In cocoa, the weak U.S. dollar helped push U.S. cocoa futures higher, dragging the London market up with it, traders said.
"The specs are attacted to cocoa because it has performed well," one London cocoa trader said.
"New York was buoyed by currency -- and that dragged London higher."
Dealers talked of concerns over tight supplies of beans from the main West African producing countries of Ivory Coast and Ghana underpinning the cocoa futures markets.
ICE May cocoa was up $21 at $2,791 per tonne, while London May was up 10 pounds to 1,953 pounds per tonne.
Cocoa bean exports from Ivory Coast's San Pedro port totalled 225,644 tonnes from October to January of the 2008/09 season, down more than 17 percent on the same period last year, port data showed on Friday.
Nigeria's cocoa exports rose by 11 percent to 18,554 tonnes in November 2008 from the same period of the previous year, data from the Federal Produce Inspection Service (FPIS) showed on Thursday.
Coffee futures trading was dominated by rollover business in light volumes, with dealers seeing a more bullish potential in arabicas than robustas, due to a tight supply outlook for Brazilian coffee.
Dealers talked of light origin selling in robusta coffee keeping a lid on the market.
ICE March arabicas fell 0.45 cent to $1.1875 per lb at 1245 GMT, while London May robustas were up $6 to $1,668 per tonne.
Brazil exported 2.09 million 60-kg bags of green coffee in January, up 7.2 percent from 1.95 million bags in the same month a year ago, the Council of Green Coffee Exporters said on Thursday.