News Sugar beets
Cosun is running its first organic beet campaign this year
This season, Cosun Beet Company is running its first full-fledged campaign with organically grown sugar beets. This is done at the factory in Anklam, North Germany. The cooperative has been experimenting with the cultivation and production of organic sugar for five years. The market prospects are good, Cosun told German media.
The German campaign of Cosun Beet Company in Anklam is going smoothly this autumn, despite the fact that it is also wet in our eastern neighbors. At the beginning of the harvest, in September, yields were slightly lower than expected. Ultimately, the cooperative expects to be slightly above the multi-year average with 12,6 tons of sugar per hectare. Last year that was 12,8 tons. For comparison: in the Netherlands the expectation is 13,6 tonnes. More than 900.000 tons of beets have now been processed. The campaign will run until the end of January.
Stable area
With an area of 24.000 hectares spread over 340 growers, the beet area is stable in Cosun's German cultivation area, which extends from Rostock to the Polish border. In 2009, the Dutch company took over the only sugar factory in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern from the Danish Danisco, which sold its sugar division to Nordzucker. The competition authority's requirement was that the location in Anklam be divested. Under Cosun's leadership, the area grew steadily.
Since 2019, Cosun has been experimenting with the cultivation and processing of organic sugar beets, which will be processed at the start of the campaign in early September. In 2019 we started with 20 hectares of organic beets. For this harvest year that was already more than 500 hectares. That is less than previously estimated, when a maximum of 1.000 hectares was discussed. A total of 20.000 tons of organic sugar beets were processed this season.
Good prospects
The organic beets are processed into thick juice that is stored until next year, when sugar is extracted from them. Organic beet pulp is also produced and sold. Cosun says it sees good market prospects for organic sugar. The focus is on growth among the affiliated growers before 2024.
The Anklam factory will process 1,8 million tons of sugar beets this year. So the campaign was halfway done at the end of November. After processing the beets, the thick juice campaign starts.
Niels van der Boom
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