Jan, 30, 2009 - Despite challenging weather conditions for sugar beet growing, Danisco Sugar's total sugar production meets expectations.
Danisco Sugar’s six sugar factories in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany and Lithuania generated production of 1,003,000 tonnes of sugar in the 2008/09 campaign just ended. Production at all factories has been characterised by high stability, which has contributed to the satisfactory result, but the sugar beet yield has varied considerably from country to country due to the very different weather conditions during the sugar beet growth period.
Positive campaigns in Denmark and Sweden particularly contributed to the result. In a comment to the campaign, Executive Vice President Thomas B. Olsen, Agriculture, Danisco Sugar, says:
‘Growing conditions in the two countries have been close to optimal late in the period, which resulted in record-high sugar beet yields. In Sweden, however, a brief period of frost had a negative effect on the beet quality. The large beet volumes combined with efficient operations at our factories have resulted in sugar production significantly above the two countries’ national quotas.’
‘In Finland beet growing was influenced by heavy rainfalls and low temperatures, while Lithuania suffered from drought. In both places we have therefore generated production slightly below the EU quotas, which is, however, covered by transferring sugar from the previous year.’
‘The area around our factory in Anklam in Germany, where we have run our first parallel production of sugar and bioethanol, has also been impacted by drought. In spite of that, sugar production was 50% above our EU quota. The reason for this is that the beet acreage was increased to support the bioethanol production.’
Overall, Danisco Sugar’s production was lower compared with last year as a result of the sugar quota renunciation that took place before the 2008/09 campaign.
Danisco's sugar output for 2008/09 by country:
| Country |
Production (tonnes sugar) |
Production 2007/08 (tonnes sugar) |
Sugar yield (tonnes sugar/ha) |
Sugar quota 2008/09 (tonnes sugar) |
| Denmark |
397,000 |
380,000 |
11.4 (10.1) |
372,000 |
| Sweden |
327,000 |
354,000 |
9.3 (8.7) |
293,000 |
| Finland |
69,000 |
101,000 |
5.7 (6.1) |
81,000 |
| Germany |
167,000 |
136,000 |
8.1 (9.0) |
112,000 |
| Lithuania |
43,000 |
98,000 |
7.2 (7.0) |
64,000 |