VHP Sugar vs ICUMSA 45: Specs, Prices and the Best Choice for Your Business in 2026

VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 is one of the first questions new sugar buyers ask us, and it’s a good one, because the two look like they belong on the same shelf. They don’t. One is raw sugar made for refineries. The other is refined white sugar that goes straight into soft drinks, sweets and supermarket bags. We’re DThai Company Limited in Thailand, and we sell both grades to buyers worldwide. This guide explains what each one is, how the specs differ, what they cost and which one you should actually be buying.

VHP Sugar vs ICUMSA 45 in One Minute

If you only read one section, read this one.

• VHP sugar (Very High Polarization) is raw cane sugar. It’s light brown, sticky to the touch, and still carries a thin film of molasses. Refineries buy it and turn it into white sugar.
• ICUMSA 45 is fully refined white sugar. It’s bright white, dry and free-flowing, and it’s ready for food and drink factories or retail packing.

So in VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45, the real difference is where the sugar is in the chain. VHP is a raw material. ICUMSA 45 is a finished product. That affects the color, the purity, the packing, the shipping, the price and, most importantly, who can use it.

What Is VHP Sugar?

VHP stands for Very High Polarization. Polarization (or “pol”) is a measure of how much of the sugar is pure sucrose. VHP raw sugar usually has a pol of 99.3 to 99.49 degrees, which is high for a raw sugar. That high purity is what refineries pay for, because it means less work and less loss when they refine it.

VHP is made at the sugar mill. Cane is crushed, the juice is cleaned and boiled, and the sugar crystals are spun out of the syrup in a centrifuge. The mill stops there. The crystals keep a coat of molasses, which gives them their golden brown color.

Most VHP in world trade is priced against the ICE Sugar No. 11 futures contract, the global benchmark for raw sugar. Brazil is the biggest exporter and Thailand is usually second. Thai VHP has a good name with refineries in Asia because of its steady pol and short voyage times.

What Is ICUMSA 45 Sugar?

ICUMSA is the International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis. It sets the lab methods the whole sugar trade uses, including the color test. The number after ICUMSA is the color in ICUMSA units (IU). The lower the number, the whiter the sugar.

ICUMSA 45 means the color is 45 IU or less. That’s refined white sugar, the highest common grade in international trade. When people talk about VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45, they’re really comparing the start and the end of the refining process. It’s made by taking raw sugar like VHP, dissolving it, filtering and decolorizing the syrup, then crystallizing it again into clean white crystals.

The world benchmark for refined white sugar is the ICE London White Sugar No. 5 contract, which is based on ICUMSA 45 quality. If you want the full ladder of grades from 45 up to 1,200, see our guide to ICUMSA sugar grades explained.

VHP Sugar vs ICUMSA 45: Specifications Side by Side

Here are the typical export specs for each grade. These are the specs we sell to. Your contract will list the exact limits for your lot.

Look at moisture and ash. Those two numbers tell you most of what you need to know about VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45. Raw sugar carries more water and more minerals because it hasn’t been cleaned. Refined sugar has almost none.

Color: The Difference You Can See

Put a handful of each on a white plate and you’ll see the gap straight away. VHP sits somewhere around 600 to 1,200 IU, which looks like light demerara. ICUMSA 45 is bright white.

Color matters because it shows up in the end product. A clear lemonade made with raw sugar comes out yellow. A white fondant icing made with raw sugar comes out beige. That’s why food factories that care about how their product looks buy ICUMSA 45 and nothing else. In VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45, color is the deal breaker for most food buyers.

Purity and Polarization

On polarization, VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 isn’t as far apart as people think. VHP at 99.3 to 99.49 degrees is already very pure. ICUMSA 45 at 99.8 degrees or more is just a bit purer. The difference is in the last fraction of a percent: the molasses film, the ash and the color compounds that the refinery removes.

For a refinery, high pol means more white sugar out of every ton of raw. That’s why refineries pay a premium for VHP over lower-pol raw sugar. So on purity alone, VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 is a smaller gap than on color or moisture.

Who Buys VHP and Who Buys ICUMSA 45

VHP sugar buyers

• Sugar refineries
• Large state buyers and trading houses that supply refineries
• Some ethanol and fermentation plants
• A few industrial users who don’t care about color, like some feed or molasses-based processes

VHP is not usually sold for direct human consumption. In many countries it isn’t legal to put raw industrial sugar on a supermarket shelf without refining it first. Check your local food rules.

ICUMSA 45 buyers

• Soft drink and juice bottlers
• Confectionery, chocolate and biscuit makers
• Dairy, ice cream and yoghurt producers
• Bakeries and food service suppliers
• Pharmaceutical companies (syrups and tablet coatings)
• Wholesalers and retail packers selling 1kg and 2kg bags

So when someone asks us about VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45, our first question back is: do you own a refinery? If the answer is no, you almost certainly want ICUMSA 45.

Price: Why ICUMSA 45 Costs More

Refining costs money. It takes energy, chemicals, filters, labor and a big plant. That cost shows up as the “white premium,” the gap between the price of refined white sugar and raw sugar on the world market.

Historically the white premium has moved in a rough range of about 80 to 150 US dollars per ton, and it has gone higher when refining capacity was tight. So in a normal market, ICUMSA 45 costs noticeably more per ton than VHP.

But price per ton isn’t the full picture when you compare VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45. If you don’t have a refinery, buying VHP to save money is a false saving. You’d need to pay someone to refine it, and you’d lose some weight in the process. For a food factory or distributor, ICUMSA 45 is the cheaper choice in practice, because it’s ready to use.

Sugar prices move every day with the futures market, the Brazilian and Thai harvests, the oil price (because Brazil switches cane between sugar and ethanol) and freight. Ask us for a current quote on VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 rather than trusting an old price list.

Packing and Shipping

This is another place where VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 really splits.

How VHP ships

VHP mostly moves in bulk, loose in the hold of a ship. Typical lots are 12,500 to 60,000 tons per vessel. That suits refineries with their own bulk unloading at the port, and it’s a big part of why VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 also means bulk vs bags. We can also bag VHP in 50kg bags and ship it in containers for smaller buyers, but that’s less common and adds cost.

How ICUMSA 45 ships

ICUMSA 45 almost always ships in bags. We use new 50kg PP woven bags with a PE inner liner to keep moisture out, or 1,000kg jumbo bags for factories with forklifts. A 20ft container usually takes about 25 tons, or 500 bags of 50kg. We can also pack 1kg and 2kg retail bags under your own brand.

For a full list of the papers each shipment needs, see our bulk sugar import documentation checklist.

Storage and Shelf Life

Both grades keep well if they stay dry. ICUMSA 45 is the easier one to store. With moisture under 0.04%, it stays free-flowing for 24 months or more in a cool, dry warehouse. Keep it off the floor on pallets and away from walls.

VHP is stickier and holds more moisture, so it can cake if the warehouse is humid. Refineries usually process it within weeks or months of arrival. Long storage isn’t what it’s made for. If shelf life matters to you, that tips VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 firmly toward the refined grade.

Thai Sugar: What We Sell

Thailand crushes cane from about December to April and exports millions of tons of sugar every year, both raw and white. We supply:

• ICUMSA 45 refined white sugar in 50kg bags, jumbo bags and retail packs
• VHP raw sugar in larger lots, bulk or bagged
• White sugar (granulated) in other ICUMSA grades, including ICUMSA 100 to 150
• Brown sugar, demerara sugar and muscovado sugar
• Liquid sugar products, including invert sugar syrup
• Powdered sugar and coconut sugar

You can see everything in one place on our sugar for sale page. For an overview of the Thai market, grades and export rules, read our Thai sugar supplier guide.

How to Choose: VHP Sugar vs ICUMSA 45 for Your Business

Here’s how we’d decide if we were in your shoes:

1. You run a refinery. Buy VHP. It’s the cheapest way to make your own white sugar, and high pol gives you a better yield.
2. You make food or drinks. Buy ICUMSA 45. You need low color, low moisture and a sugar that dissolves clean.
3. You sell sugar to shops or wholesalers. Buy ICUMSA 45, or ICUMSA 100 to 150 if your market accepts a slightly less white sugar at a lower price.
4. You make rum, ethanol or fermented products. VHP may work fine, since color doesn’t matter much there. Test a sample first.
5. You’re a trader. Follow your end buyer. Don’t buy one grade hoping to sell it as the other.

Most of our customers are in group two or three, and for them the VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 decision is easy: ICUMSA 45.

A Word on Scams

Sugar, and especially ICUMSA 45, attracts a lot of fake offers. The classic one is a “seller” offering huge monthly volumes of Brazilian ICUMSA 45 far below market price, asking for a bank instrument or an upfront fee before showing you any real sugar. Some of these offers deliberately blur VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 to make the price look believable.

Real suppliers send you a real sample, a real contract and accept independent inspection at loading. They don’t ask you to pay for “documents” before you’ve seen a thing. We wrote a whole post on this: ICUMSA 45 sugar supplier: real specs and scam warning signs.

Quality Checks Before Your Sugar Ships

Whichever grade you buy, we test every lot before loading. For ICUMSA 45 that means color, pol, moisture, ash, SO2, reducing sugars and a visual check for foreign matter. For VHP, the main ones are pol, color and moisture. The test list itself shows you how different VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 really is.

You can appoint an independent inspection company to sample the sugar at loading and issue a quality and weight certificate. We encourage it. It protects you, and it protects us too.

The methods used for all these tests come from ICUMSA itself. If you want to go deep on how color and pol are measured, the ICUMSA website lists the official methods.

Three Real Buyer Situations

Specs on paper only go so far. Here are three kinds of buyers we deal with, and how VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 played out for each of them. Names left out, of course.

The soft drink bottler

A bottler asked us to quote VHP because a broker had told them it was “the same sugar, cheaper.” We sent samples of both. Their lab dissolved each one in water and the VHP solution came out the color of weak tea. That ended the VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 debate in about ten minutes. They now take ICUMSA 45 in 50kg bags every month.

The small refinery

A refinery with its own bulk unloading wanted to cut costs. For them, VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 was never a real contest: buying refined sugar would have left their plant sitting idle. VHP with a high pol gave them the best yield per ton, and buying a full vessel kept the freight per ton low.

The wholesale distributor

A distributor selling to shops and bakeries was torn between ICUMSA 45 and ICUMSA 150. Their customers wanted white sugar, but price mattered more than a perfect color. They ended up taking ICUMSA 45 for bakery customers and ICUMSA 150 for the retail market. VHP never came into it, because their customers eat the sugar.

Quick Checklist Before You Choose

Run through these before you decide between VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45:

• Does your plant or customer need white sugar that dissolves clear? Then ICUMSA 45.
• Do you have refining equipment? If not, VHP will cost you more in the end.
• Can your port and warehouse handle bulk cargo? VHP usually comes that way.
• Do your local food rules allow raw sugar to be sold to consumers? Most don’t.
• What volume do you need per shipment? VHP makes sense at vessel scale. ICUMSA 45 works from one container.
• How long will you store it? ICUMSA 45 keeps longer without caking.

If you tick the boxes on the white-sugar side, you have your answer to VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45.

Common Questions From Buyers

A few mix-ups come up again and again when buyers compare VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45:

• “Can I use VHP instead of white sugar to save money?” Only if color, taste and food rules don’t matter for your product. For most food uses, no.
• “Is ICUMSA 45 healthier?” Not really. It’s purer sucrose, but sugar is sugar. The difference is quality and appearance, not nutrition.
• “Is VHP the same as brown sugar?” No. Retail brown sugar is usually refined white sugar with a measured amount of molasses added back, made for eating. VHP is raw industrial sugar made for refining.
• “Is ICUMSA 150 a good middle option?” For some markets, yes. ICUMSA 100 to 150 is a decent white sugar at a lower price, and many retail buyers in Africa and Asia use it.

Minimum Order, Payment and Lead Time

For ICUMSA 45, our minimum order is one 20ft container, about 25 tons. Most buyers start there and move to regular monthly shipments once they’re happy with the quality.

For VHP, orders are usually much larger, since it moves in bulk vessels. We’ll talk you through what’s realistic for your volume and port, and whether VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 even makes sense at that size.

We work on standard payment terms, including letter of credit at sight and other terms agreed in the contract. Lead time for ICUMSA 45 in bags is usually two to four weeks from contract. For ongoing supply, our supply contracts let you lock in volume and terms for the season.

Shipping Worldwide

We ship Thai sugar from Bangkok and Laem Chabang to Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, North and South America and Oceania. Whether you’re weighing VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 for a refinery in the Gulf or a bottling plant in South America, we’ll quote you CIF or FOB with the right packing for your port. See our worldwide shipping page for routes.

Why Buy Your Sugar From DThai

We’re not the biggest sugar seller in the world, and we don’t pretend to be. What we do well is simple:

• We give you lab figures for your actual lot, not a copy-paste spec sheet.
• We send real samples before you commit to a container.
• We welcome independent inspection at loading, every time.
• We tell you honestly which grade fits your use, even if it’s the cheaper one.
• We also supply Thai rice and sunflower oil, so you can combine products and suppliers. Buying oil as well? See our guide to the high oleic sunflower oil price per ton.

If you’re still weighing up VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45, talk to us before you sign anything. Read more on our why choose us page or browse other buying guides on our blog.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main difference in VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45?

VHP is raw cane sugar for refineries, with a color of 600 to 1,200 IU. ICUMSA 45 is refined white sugar with a color of 45 IU or less, ready for food use.

Is VHP sugar safe to eat?

It’s made from cane like all cane sugar, but it’s an industrial raw material. It isn’t cleaned to food grade standards and most countries expect it to be refined before it’s sold to consumers.

Which is more expensive?

ICUMSA 45, because it has gone through the refining process. The gap is called the white premium.

Can VHP be shipped in containers?

Yes, in 50kg bags, but most VHP moves in bulk ships because it’s cheaper at large volumes.

What does ICUMSA 45 mean?

It means the sugar’s color measures 45 ICUMSA units or less. The lower the number, the whiter the sugar.

Do you sell both VHP and ICUMSA 45?

Yes. We supply both from Thailand, along with white, brown, demerara, muscovado, powdered and coconut sugar.

Can I get a sample?

Yes. Ask us and we’ll send a sample of the grade you’re interested in, with the lab analysis. If you’re still unsure about VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45, ask for both and compare them side by side.

VHP sugar vs ICUMSA 45 comes down to one question: are you refining sugar or using it? If you’re refining, VHP. If you’re using it, ICUMSA 45. Either way, we can supply it from Thailand with real specs and proper paperwork. Contact us with your grade, volume and port, and we’ll send you a quote.