The sugar price is going up. This is mainly due to rising energy costs. The beet campaign started at the sugar factory of Cosun Beet Company in Dinteloord on Tuesday.
Beet trucks from the Netherlands and abroad arrive at the largest sugar producer in Europe. Despite the drought, sugar yields are likely to be higher than the average over the past five years.
“We do see large regional differences in the beet yield between the clay and sandy soils. But the large amount of sun allowed the plants to grow optimally and ultimately that gives a nice sugar content,” says Arno Huijsmans, director of Agricultural Affairs at Cosun Beet Company.
The gas price is five or six times higher than normal
The factory in Dinteloord is largely dependent on gas energy for heating the boilers. “The gas price is five or six times higher than normal. This means that the products in which sugar is processed become more expensive. That is no different than with grain products,” explains Huijsmans.
The price of granulated sugar from Dinteloord will rise by about forty percent for customers from, among others, the retail trade and the sugar processing industry. Arno Huijsmans: “The increase is indeed significant, but the price has been very low in recent years. Then we earned almost nothing. We were almost in the red. So it had to change at some point in order to be able to pay a good beet price to the farmers.”
“Diesel in case gas tap closes.”
If the gas tap in Europe unexpectedly closes in the coming months, the industry will have to rely on itself. In that case, they switch to diesel at the sugar factory in Dinteloord. “Of course we would rather not see that happen, because such a conversion also means that the campaign will be stopped for a few days.”
To prevent these kinds of problems in the future, the factory eventually wants to get rid of gas altogether. “There are plans to carry out the cooking process in a different way using electricity instead of gas. We can get by with half the energy. That is a gigantic step to be climate neutral in 2050”, says director Huijsmans.
