Nordzucker Post 03/2022 - 21 July 2022

Lars Gorissen: Nordzucker – Heading for the future

Dear Readers

Finally, the Annual General Meetings have again taken place in person. The high number of registrations and many questions, also submitted in advance, confirm the great interest in the company and the need to once again exchange ideas in person. 

We achieved a very good result in the past financial year thanks to our cost efficiency and the market development. The Annual General Meeting approved the dividend proposal of € 0.80 per share. The first quarter of the current financial year also shows positive results. The price increases for raw materials and energy are also noticeable in the sugar markets.

We have sent the right signal in the arrangement of the 2023 sugar beet supply contracts. An attractive guaranteed price and the flexibility to respond to future price and cost developments have led to a slightly above-average subscription of the targeted volume in Germany. We are confident of achieving our expectations for cultivation volumes in most other countries as well.

The beet for the upcoming campaign is growing. Despite the severe drought, we expect an average beet harvest for the entire company. In any case, the upcoming campaign will be a special task for all harvesting, logistics and processing operations involved. Flexibility and close coordination will be required.

The big challenge for the coming campaign is the availability of energy. Through early planning, we have succeeded in technically enabling the use of heating oil as an energy source in the vast majority of our plants that have already switched to gas. We are in constant exchange with the licensing authorities in order to ensure the beet campaign or to be able to make our replaced quantities available to other gas consumers in the event of a gas shortage.

Our goal is to process as many beet as possible under the current conditions and to produce the sugar our customers need. Sugar is in high demand in the food industry and retail trade. It is an important ingredient in many foods, in which it fulfils indispensable functions.

Nevertheless, there is no way around the conversion to renewable energy sources in the long term. We are focusing on using the beet pulp delivered with the sugar beet. We want to use it to produce biomethane to meet the energy needs of our plants. Independent of fossil energies and climate-neutral through a raw material for which no additional land has to be cultivated – that is a fascinating idea that should also be politically accepted. We will all continue to work on this.

I hope you enjoy reading Nordzucker Post and I wish you a good harvest and summer season.

Yours
Lars Gorissen