NEW YORK, Sept 11 (Reuters) -
London cocoa futures on ICE steadied on Monday after hitting a new 46-year high, as new supply squeeze signals emerged, this time from top producer Ivory Coast.
Arabica coffee gained nearly 3%.
COCOA
* December London cocoa settled down 14 pounds, or 0.5%, to 3,036 pounds per metric ton, after touching the highest since 1977 at 3,063 pounds.
* Ivory Coast has closed its cocoa contract sales for the 2023/24 (October-September) season at 1.4 million tonnes, down from 1.7 million tonnes in the previous season, industry and government sources told Reuters.
* Cocoa production in the world's top producer is meanwhile expected to fall by as much as 20% in the upcoming 2023/24 season due to poor weather, industry sources said.
* London cocoa speculators raised their net long positions by 2,494 lots to 66,573 lots as of Sept. 5, data showed.
* December New York cocoa was little changed at $3,656 a ton.
SUGAR
* October white sugar settled up $6.40, or 0.9%, at $733.20 a ton, after touching a 12-year high of $753.10 last week.
* Sugar is being driven by concern over dimming supply prospects in India, one of the world's top producers.
* Shares of Indian sugar manufacturers rose overnight after the country advanced by five years the deadline for doubling nationwide cane-based ethanol blending in gasoline to 20%.
* Higher ethanol production in the country will mean smaller sugar output.
* October raw sugar rose 0.09 cent, or 0.3%, at 26.40 cents per lb.
COFFEE
* December arabica coffee settled up 4.2 cents, or 2.8%, at $1.5285 per lb, recovering after hitting a 3-week low of $1.4760 earlier in the session.
* Brazilian broker Escritorio Carvalhaes said in a weekly note that farmer selling remains slow, since prices are close to production costs, with most new-crop deliveries linked to old contracts.
* November robusta coffee rose $32, or 1.3%, at $2,439 a ton.
* Vietnam's coffee exports in the first eight months of 2023 stood at 1.2 million metric tons, a fall of 5.4% year-on-year. (Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira and Maytaal Angel; Editing by Alison Williams, David Evans and Shailesh Kuber)