Recent news from China makes depressing reading for commodities producers, with a slowing economy, tumbling stock prices and a currency devaluation all signaling weaker demand. There is one exception: the world’s second biggest economy has begun importing ethanol in volumes big enough to stir hopes that it might herald an opening of a major, until now barely accessible, market. “If it becomes constant, that’s big news. China’s a place where everyone looks and says, ‘what if,'” said Jordan Fife, a merchant with BioUrja Trading LLC in Houston. State-run grain trader China National Oils and Foodstuffs Corp, known as COFCO, has begun shipping ethanol from its recently acquired mills in Brazil in recent months, the first shipments from the world’s second-biggest exporter since 2012, according to trade sources and Brazilian trade data. Other Chinese buyers have […]