Cosan's Raizen shows smaller loss on sugar, ethanol, energy sales

SAO PAULO, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Brazilian sugar and ethanol producer Raizen Energia SA, the joint venture of local conglomerate Cosan SA and Royal-Dutch Shell, posted a quarterly net loss of 87.5 million reais, down from a 115.4 million real loss a year ago.

Raizen Energia, which is Brazil's biggest sugar and ethanol producer, said its adoption of hedge accounting standards caused an 87.8 million real impact on its operating results due to the depreciation of the local real against the dollar over the October-to-December quarter.

The milling group crushed 11.7 million tonnes of cane in the quarter, down 27.5 percent from crushing during the quarter a year ago. Drought early in 2014 hurt development of the crop that recently ended harvest.

Over the entire 2014/15 cane season that starts on April 1 officially, Raizen crushed 57.1 million tonnes of cane, down 7 percent from the previous season.

Raizen's 24 cane mills, which have annual capacity to crush 66.8 million tonnes, produced 4.08 million tonnes of sugar, down 9 percent on year. Of that, 847,000 tonnes was produced in the last quarter of 2014.

Ethanol production reached 2.06 billion liters during 2014/15 crushing, up 1 percent from a year earlier, with 454 million liters produced in the final quarter of last year.

Raizen said it had improved operating results, which helped reduce its losses during the quarter, due to greater returns from its sugar, ethanol and energy sales.

Other large milling groups such as Sao Martinho and Biosev have reported similarly strong returns from energy sales.

Cosan (NYSE: CZZ - news) is due to report earnings on March 18 which will include Raizen and results from other subsidiaries of its industrial group. (Reporting by Roberto Samora and Reese Ewing; editing by Andrew Hay)