8 February 2023

Challenging 2022/23 campaign successfully concluded

Nordzucker has successfully completed sugar production from sugar beet and sugar cane at all its factories in the seven European countries and in Australia. Yields are behind the 5-year average due to heat and drought in some regions. This was not compensated by higher sugar contents, so that the overall campaign result was below average. In Australia, the sugar cane harvest brought very good yields.

Overview of the campaign at Nordzucker locations

The campaign was completed in all countries in December or January. The Uelzen plant (Germany) processed its last beet on February 5th. This was due to the quality of the beet as a result of extreme weather conditions. There were unusual frosts down to minus 15 degrees in December followed by relatively high temperatures and rain. Bacteria formed slimy substances in the thawed sugar beet, which then led to processing problems. Thanks to good cooperation between agriculture, logistics and production, it was possible to find other uses for beet that could no longer be processed, such as feeding it into biogas plants. Overall, this affected significantly less than one per cent of the total beet volume for Nordzucker.

On average, the campaign lasted about 114 days for all European factories. In Germany, Denmark and Lithuania, organic beet was again processed into organic sugar in the first days of the campaign.

The crush, the processing of sugar cane, in Australia was not completed until 13 January 2023 after an unexpectedly long 213 days. Rains in July led to harvest interruptions but also to higher cane yields than expected.