By Charlotte Kingsman, co-founder ECRUU

About a decade before co-founding ECRUU, I started my career at what was known at the time as Kingsman (now part of S&P Global Commodities Insight).

As I embarked on my new career, I was given two main tasks.

First, I was asked to ring the bell that marked the end of coffee networking sessions during conferences. This part of my career was short-lived following several complaints from delegates that the bell ringer was “overzealous.”

The other thing I was asked to do was help with supply and demand (S&D) estimates and trade flows. The team already had experts for several regions (the “Brazil expert,” the “EU expert,” etc) and so I was asked to work on what no one else wanted to deal with: statistics for African countries.

I later found out it was a rite of passage for newcomers in the sugar world (African stats – not the bell ringing).

Why?

Because it’s extremely difficult to get supply and demand numbers for these regions, no one really wants to do it. It’s a “finger in the air” kind of thing, also known as SWAG (Sophisticated Wild-Ass Guess).

Source: Pixabay

In the absence of reliable sources of information, I used the news. I was amazed to see how much useful information was in local media, stuff that rarely made it to big stream media.

Many years later, even after gaining much expertise on the markets, I continued to use the news.

Still today, local media continues to be filled with information that could be very useful to participants in the sugar and ethanol markets. That’s why we created ECRUU – to make sure you don’t miss out.

Are you involved in the sugar and ethanol markets? Get in touch with us – at info@ecruu.com – to find out more about how our services can help simplify your life.

_______

ECRUU was founded in 2016 by Charlotte Kingsman and her brother Oliver Kingsman. Find out more here.