Hamburg, Nov 3 - Germany is heading for a large sugar crop this season following favourable weather and more exports are likely as it is again set to exceed its European Union production quota, the head German sugar industry association WVZ said on Tuesday.
Germany is on course to produce 4.11 million tonnes of refined sugar this season, up from 3.7 million tonnes last year, Dieter Langendorf said.
Along with 116,000 of unsold stocks transferred into the new season, this will mean Germany will probably produce about 1.3 million tonnes of sugar above its EU production quota of 2.89 million tonnes, he said.
Under EU rules for sale of subsidised crops, sugar above EU quotas cannot be sold for food but can be marketed for non-food industrial use or exported.
German producers are likely to export more of their surplus production this season after the EU relaxed export restrictions, Langendorf said.
"We will have about one million tonnes of non-quota sugar but two weeks ago the EU Commission increased the export possibility for non-quota sugar by 700,000 tonnes," he said. "This means that more sugar can now be exported."
In October, the EU raised the maximum permitted volume of non-quota sugar which can be exported in the current 2009/2010 season from 650,000 tonnes to 1.35 million tonnes.
Exports of sugar from the EU's heavily-subsidised sugar sector are limited under World Trade Organisation rules, but the WVZ said the EU sugar industry had pressed for the export rise because of the larger crop looming this season.
Germany's large bioethanol industry is again expected to be a large customer for the new crop, he said.
Germany had last season also produced about 850,000 tonnes of sugar above EU quotas, much of which went for bioethanol output.
About a third of Germany's large bioethanol production uses sugar as a feedstock.
GERMAN CROP WITH HIGH SUGAR LEVEL
Beets harvested so far in this year's German crop show significantly higher sugar content of 18.32 percent against 17.81 percent in the same test last year.
German farmers will produce about 25.08 million tonnes of sugar beet in the current 2009/10 crop and refining season which is now underway, up from 23.6 million tonnes in 2008/09.
A rise had been expected after a 4.3 percent increase in beet plantings, he said. Favourable weather means about 67 tonnes of beets were expected to be harvested per hectare against 61 tonnes a hectare last year.
The higher beet yield and sugar content are also due to good German weather, he said.