SAO PAULO -- A blaze destroyed a warehouse holding 50,000 tonnes of sugar operated by Cargill Inc and Biosev on Monday at Brazil's Santos port, its third major sugar fire in a year.

Firefighters had the blaze in warehouse 3 under control at the largest port in Latin America and kept it from spreading to a second warehouse, according to a spokesman for Codesp, the port authority. There were no reports of injuries.

The terminal, known as TEAG sugar terminal, is a 50-50 joint venture between Cargill and Biosev, the sugar unit of Louis Dreyfus Commodities.

Cargill said in a statement that approximately 50,000 tonnes of sugar had been stored in that warehouse. A second warehouse and TEAG's shiploading operations were not affected. The terminal has storage capacity of 110,000 tonnes and has insurance for its buildings, equipment and stocks, Cargill said.

Biosev said in a separate statement that about half of the 50,000 tonnes of sugar were its property and that it had already found alternative storage capacity.

The local fire department said the cause of the blaze was not yet known. Santos is located in southeastern Brazil, a region suffering its hottest, driest weather in decades.

Codesp said in August it was reviewing security procedures with waterway agency Antaq to try to prevent more fires after a blaze damaged Cosan SA's Rumo terminal. The port authority on Monday did not respond to questions about the review process.

Bruno Zaneti, risk consultant for sugar and ethanol at INTL FC Stone in Campinas, Brazil, said the unprecedented weather had caused some sugar mills to take the unusual measure of spraying water on sugar stocks to increase humidity and lessen the chances of fire.

"The dryness in Sao Paulo has never been this bad," Zaneti said.

"Brazil's stocks are quite high, and very vulnerable. This is something people are worried about."

In October 2013, local sugar trading giant Copersucar lost much of its sugar export terminal, with a capacity of 10 million tonnes, to a fire. The company said it expects to have all of that capacity back on line by April 2015.

Front-month ICE raw sugar futures ended up 0.24 percent at 16.66 cents/lb. After previous fires, futures prices quickly spiked more than 5 percent in a day.

Market players said the reaction was more muted due to an ample global supply of sugar and the belief that prices had overreacted after the other fires at Santos this year.

Cargill and Copersucar, Brazil's largest sugar and ethanol trader, recently combined their sugar trading and logistics assets globally, which may help the U.S.-based commodities trader reroute some sugar exports through Copersucar's terminal.

Brazil is about to enter its intraharvest period when the flow of sugar slows as mills wind down operations until the start of harvest in April next year.