A surprise revival in sugar on Monday has further to go before provoking hopes of a sustained rally, to judge by chart patterns, Sucden Financial Sugar has said.

Raw sugar for July delivery posted gains of up to 2.8% in New York, taking it to 14.53 cents a pound and overcoming early weakness that many traders had expected following the rise in the dollar to its highest for more than a year against a basket of currencies.

A strong dollar makes assets, such as sugar, denominated in it less affordable to buyers using other currencies, and kept prices of other farm commodities, such as cocoa, coffee and corn, in negative territory on Monday.

The sweetener's revival came amid rumours that Pakistan, which bought 200,000 tonnes of white sugar last week, had purchased a further 100,000 tonnes.

White sugar stood up 2.6% at $478.10 a tonne at its morning top in London.

Head and shoulders 

However, while sugar's recovery on Monday may have been helped by technical indicators, which could be signalling a change to bearish trend which has halved raw sugar since February 1, the market needed further headway to show a firmer indication of a change in sentiment.

"The chart does have a potential bottoming pattern in it, but appears to really need a close above 15.50 cents a pound in order to get the bears out there rethinking," Sucden's Thomas Kujawa said.

For white sugar, there was a "reasonable argument" for a bottom within a so-called "head and shoulders", a chart pattern often seen in commodity corrections, if London's August lot closed above $480 a tonne.

"The whites would probably need a close above $500 [a tonne] to get the wind behind the bulls and, despite rumours of Pakistan offtake, that seems very optimistic," Mr Kujawa said.