IKAR in Mass Media

Russian sugar lobby raises output forecast

29 декабря 2008 года

MOSCOW, Dec 3 (Reuters) - The Russian Sugar Producers' Union, the industry lobby, has raised its forecast for the country's sugar refining from domestic beet due to higher yields, the union said on Wednesday.

"The union believes beet sugar output to be 3.200 million tonnes in the calendar year of 2008 compared to 3.229 million tonne in (the calendar year of) 2007," a union statement said.

"Output in the crop year of 2008/09 is seen at 3.300 million tonnes, up from 3.125 in 2007/08 as higher yields... will compensate a decline in the sowings area." The union previously expected white sugar output from this year's crop to be 3.1 million tonnes. The new forecast is in line with expectations of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) which sees output at 3.28 million tonnes.

The area sown with sugar beets fell to 867,000 tonnes this year from 1.06 million hectares in 2007. The union said in October that average yields rose this year to 34.05 tonnes per hectare from 27.06 a year ago.

Russia consumes some 5.8 million tonnes of sugar a year, and in the last two years managed to refine more than half of it from domestically grown beet. Most of the remainder was refined from imported raw cane sugar.

Russia used to be the largest sugar buyer, until it was overtaken by the European union in the 2008/09 season started in October.

Russia refined 2.98 million tonnes of white sugar from beet by Dec. 1, up 10 percent from year-ago volumes, the union statement said.

It gave the following data for Russian white sugar refining from domestic beet (in tonnes):

	As of Dec. 1	As of Dec 1
	2008	2007
Beet received	24,816,480	24,165,500
Beet processed	21,045,010	20,663,800
White sugar produced	2,973,590	2,711,700
Remaining beet stocks	3,281,550	3,500,960
Refineries involved	55	61