Tereos: Beet campaign sets new record in France

The General Meetings of the Tereos Group’s cooperatives, attended by several thousand cooperative growers between January 29 and February 14, 2018, provided opportunities to take stock of the sugar beet campaign.

 
The first campaign since the ending of quotas, which was concluded on February 10, shows the capacity of the Tereos cooperative group to play a major role in the recently deregulated market.  
 

The beet yield reached an exceptional level of 95 tons/hectare over 215,000 hectares, reflecting continued agronomic progress and favorable weather conditions. 

 
More than 20 million tons of sugar beet were transformed, a record increase of 30 percent compared to the previous year, demonstrating the success of our contractual agreements and climatic conditions favorable to sugar beet.

 
With an average of 145 days, Tereos recorded the best campaign length of all the French sugar producers. The reduced cost of transformation was directly linked to the extended campaigns.
 

The sugar plants achieved a very good industrial performance, with a production rate of processed sugar beet that was even higher than in 2016/17. 

 
The industrial investments carried out in recent years in Tereos’ nine French sugar plants made it possible to operate successfully throughout this first long campaign. More than €500 million has been invested since 2010 in making these facilities more competitive and more flexible. 
 

Agricultural innovation, a key factor in our competitiveness
Thanks to its long-term vision and its effective agricultural R&D programs, Tereos has provided several innovative solutions to be used by cooperative growers.
 
During the course of the campaign, Tereos launched connected sugar beet. This technology is designed to fine-tune the settings of the digging machines to protect the quality of the harvest and the preservation of the beets. This is vitally important in the context of an extended campaign.
 
This initiative adds to and strengthens the range of decision-making tools with respect to harvesting dates and conservation times. These tools are now available for portable devices thanks to the Tereos Cooperative Growers app, which provides agronomic and local news, information about the cooperative, results of deliveries and even administrative documents.

 
Another key concern is that of protecting beets from frost while they are stored in a silo. Tereos offers cooperative growers a number of solutions for achieving this, including mulching and either manual or mechanized sheeting and unsheeting. Thanks to the flexibility of the solutions made available and to collective support, 4.5 million tons of beets were protected from frost this year. 

 
With a strong commitment to road safety, Tereos introduced a number of initiatives, such as the rollout of road safety observers as well as numerous measures to raise road safety awareness, organized with all local stakeholders and transporters. 

 
All of these actions form part of the mission of Tereos to support its cooperative growers in developing innovative and competitive farming practices to promote efficient and sustainable agriculture.
 

FoodIngredientsFirst has reached out to Tereos for further information.