By Maha El Dahan

DUBAI, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Dubai's Al Khaleej Sugar Refinery, the world's largest port-based refinery for the commodity, said on Sunday it was operating at full capacity and expected to remain so for the next month.

Jamal al-Ghurair, managing director of the refinery, also told Reuters he was satisfied with the current levels of sugar white premiums, which have been averaging at around $90 a tonne.

The whites-over-raws premium is a measure of refining profitability.

"I think it is a good price to sell ... they should remain the same in the second half of the year," he said in an interview on the sidelines of the Dubai Sugar Conference.

Ghurair also said Al Khaleej could choose to deliver sugar to ICE Futures as it did in late 2016, depending on the export market situation.

Al Khaleej said in November it had delivered 404,250 tonnes of white sugar against the ICE December futures contract, the largest ever quantity by a single deliverer.

"It is a last minute option, but we can't say at the moment if we will do it," he said.

Ghurair said the export market for white sugar was still limited in the region, amid increasing refining capacity in the Middle East, adding that the refinery had produced a stable 1.8 million tonnes in 2016 with no plans for expansion.

Of the total production, around 220,000 tonnes go to supply the local market in the UAE while the rest is for export.

Al Khaleej used to sell the bulk of its white sugar to Iraq but that market is now producing most of its white sugar locally after the Babylon-based Etihad sugar refinery came onstream in 2015.

"Our export markets are the same as last year no change," Ghurair said.

He would not reveal the level of raw sugar stocks at the refinery silos but said it was all Brazilian raw sugar and that there was a steady supply according to contracts. (Reporting By Maha El Dahan, Editing by WIlliam Maclean and Susan Fenton)

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