Sugar production in Russia is expected to exceed 2017 million tons in the 2018/6,6 season. That is an increase of 0,4 million tons, compared to last year. This was reported by the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) on Tuesday 9 January.
The increase is mainly due to the continuous increase in productivity and expansion of the acreage. This increased by 7,9% to 1,19 million hectares.
Rising production
In recent years, productivity has quadrupled, resulting in a production of 5,5 tons of sugar per hectare. Production is expected to increase further to 3 to 5 tons per hectare in the next 7 to 8 years. This increase is possible due to an improvement in management, more productive crops, improved mechanization and the reduction of storage losses. The modernization of the factories also contributed to the growth.
Currently there are 43 sugar factories in Russia and they have a daily production of about 24.000 tons. Some 40 sugar factories are expected to process sugar beets in the first half of 2018, which is expected to produce 600.000 tons of sugar.
Can Russia turn this off?
The surplus sugar will probably be transported to the traditional markets: CIS countries (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan), Afghanistan, Mongolia and North Korea.
Sea exports are still used to a limited extent due to the high costs and low throughput of some seaports. However, that leaves the question of whether Russia can compete effectively on the global market compared to cheaper producers such as Brazil.
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