Sep 24 - AGRANA opened the 2009 Austrian sugar beet campaigns at its refineries in Tulln and Leopoldsdorf.
The AGRANA refineries in Kaposvár|Hungary started on 10 September, while those at Opava|Czech Republic and Sered|Slovakia began processing sugar beet on 16 and 21 September respectively. The campaign at the Group’s refinery in Hrusovany|Czech Republic was launched on 22 September. The sugar beet campaign at the AGRANA facility in Roman|Romania is due to start on schedule on 7 October.
The yield per hectare for sugar beet in all of the growing areas will be around 61 tonnes (prior year: 66 tonnes). Following the launch of organic sugar production activities in the previous year, the area for organic sugar beet has increased from 329 hectares to 539 hectares. This growing area is expected to provide a harvest of around 26,000 tonnes of organic sugar beet from which it will be possible to produce approximately 3,500 tonnes of organic sugar.
In total, the 2009|2010 sugar beet campaign is forecast to yield around 770,000 tonnes of sugar (prior year: 720,000 tonnes) from approximately 5.1 million tonnes of sugar beet (prior year: 4.7 million tonnes) processed at AGRANA’s seven sugar beet refineries in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
Potato campaign
The processing of industrial starch potatoes at the facility in Gmund began on 26 August 2009. The volume of potatoes processed, including organic industrial starch potatoes, is expected to be around 200,000 tonnes (prior year: 198,532 tonnes). The starch content is estimated at approximately 18.3%, which would yield around 43,000 tonnes of starch.
The processing of starch potatoes and organic starch potatoes into potato flakes began on 17 August 2009. The processing volume if forecast to be approximately 25,000 tonnes (prior year: 13,083 tonnes).
Wet corn campaign
The processing of freshly-harvested wet corn started at the Aschach facility at the beginning of September and is expected to continue until early December. During this period, a processing volume of approximately 100,000 tonnes (prior year: 106,500 tonnes) is expected. This will be followed by a switch back to the use of dry corn. The processing of wet corn at Hungara in Hungary also started in early September. The volume processed at this facility over the next three months will be around 180,000 tonnes (prior year: 186,000 tonnes). In addition to wheat, wet corn will also be used as a raw material for the production of bioethanol at the Pischelsdorf plant during the months of October and November.