• IKAR in Mass Media

 

 → IKAR in Mass Media → #45

IKAR in Mass Media

Russia may produce record sugarbeet production

06 сентября 2006 года

Russia may for the first time produce 3 million tonnes of sugar from sugarbeet in 2006, exceeding the 2005 record of 2.5 million tonnes, sugar market experts polled by Interfax said.

"Russia could produce 2.95 million to 3.05 million tonnes of sugar from sugarbeet this year, thus beating last year's record," Yevgeny Ivanov, a senior analyst at the Agrarian Market Institute (IKAR), said.

Production of sugarbeet sugar could for the first time exceed the production of sugar made from imported raw sugar cane, he added.

Expansion of the sugarbeet crop area to 1 million hectares from 812,000 tonnes in 2005 will help boost production, he said. "Crop conditions are satisfactory and the harvest is so far progressing without losses," he said. Crop yield is higher than last year in Krasnodar, Stavropol, Kursk and Bashkir, but slightly lower in Altai and Tatarstan, and at the same level in Chernozemye, where the biggest crop area expansion took place.

"All this enables us to predict that the crop area increase will be comparable with the increase in sugar production from sugarbeet and a very optimistic forecast is 3.1 million tonnes of sugarbeet sugar," he said.

Increased domestic production and sugar supplies from fellow CIS countries, especially from Belarus, could lead to a serious correction in sugar prices, which have recently climbed considerably. Belarusian sugar enters the Russian market at the same time as domestic sugar, increasing its volume.

"The price of sugar (Krasnodar) is about $718 per tonne, which is almost $120 above the production cost of raw sugar (at current exchange quotes), and at this indicator the price may go down," Ivanov said.

Prices will slide until the end of the year, he said. "There is no need to even think about a price rise before December," Ivanov predicts. High supply and lower prices could lead to reduced raw sugar cane imports, he said.

Russia will not need to import raw sugar cane at least until March 2007, he added.

Viktor Alexakhin, the sugar division chief at Prodimex, also reckons Russia will produce about 3 million tonnes of sugarbeet sugar in 2006.

"A 23% increase in the crop area significantly strengthened the raw material base for sugar plants, and this growth occurred amid record high sugar prices on the domestic market," he said.

Over the past few years there has been considerable interest from companies in investing in sugarbeet production and various agriculture holdings have announced major investments in growing sugarbeet and reducing raw sugar cane imports, Alexakhin said.

"Hot weather in the south of the country and a rainy fall in various regions could lead to corrections in the forecast," he said.

Raw sugar cane import volumes will depend on domestic sugar production and supplies from CIS countries, especially from Moldova, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. "Judging by the sugarbeet sugar forecast, the import of raw sugar cane could drop this year," he said.

Supplies of raw sugar cane have already fallen, as the 19% drop in raw sugar cane sugar production at the beginning of the year showed, Alexei Knyazev, the general director of Rusagro-Sakhar, said.

"Weather permitting and if farms can harvest and plants refine in time, sugarbeet sugar production could exceed 3 million tonnes this year," he said.

Sugar produced from imported raw sugar cane accounts for over 50% of Russia 's consumption. Russia consumes about 6 million tonnes of sugar annually.

Source: Interfax  |  #sugar   |  Comments: 0   Views: 80

There are no comments yet. Be the first!

Only authorized users can comment.