AGRANA Completes Sugar Beet, Potato and Wet Corn Campaigns

Following the successful launch of organic sugar production from Austrian sugar beet grown under monitored organic conditions during the last campaign, AGRANA produced 2,916 tonnes of organic sugar.

27 Jan 2010 --- AGRANA completed the sugar beet campaign at its refinery in Tulln, Lower Austria, thereby signalling the successful close of the 2009|10 processing season at all of its facilities.

Sugar beet campaign of the AGRANA Group

The campaign at AGRANA’s six sugar beet refineries in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, lasted for over 100 days, with processing actually taking place on 122 days in Austria. In total, around 747,000 tonnes of sugar (prior year: 720,000 tonnes) were produced from 5.1 million tonnes of sugar beet (prior year: 4.7 million tonnes).

The yield per hectare in all producing countries averaged 61.5 tonnes, harvested from a total planted area of 83,500 hectares this year. The sugar content, approximately 16.3%, was 0.7% lower than in the previous year. Beet from Austria and the Czech Republic in particular yielded less sugar due to unfavourable weather conditions.

Following the successful launch of organic sugar production from Austrian sugar beet grown under monitored organic conditions during the last campaign, AGRANA produced 2,916 tonnes of organic sugar (prior year: 1,823 tonnes) from 23,111 tonnes or organic sugar beet (prior year: 15,065 tonnes) in the 2009|2010 season.

This season, the environmentally-friendly and low-noise pollution transportation of the sugar beet was again one of the central aspects considered when organising the campaign. Taking all of the producing countries into account, around 40% of the sugar beet was transported to the refineries by rail, with Austria achieving a share of rail transport of around 55%. Sugar beet are also transported by ship in Austria.

Potato campaign

During the potato starch campaign at the AGRANA plant in Gmünd, Lower Austria, between 26 August and 15 December 2009, a total of 187,400 tonnes of potato starch was processed (prior year: 198,532 tonnes), of which 5,100 tonnes was organic potato starch, with a starch content of around 18.5%, to produce 40,200 tonnes of starch (prior year: 42,400 tonnes).

In addition, the autumn deliveries also included 8,000 tonnes of food industry potatoes and 3,100 tonnes of organic food industry potatoes for processing into long-life potato products such as potato flakes.

Wet corn campaign

Between 4 September and 28 November 2009, 101,000 tonnes (prior year: 106,500 tonnes) of freshly harvested corn, so-called wet corn, were processed at the AGRANA corn starch factory in Aschach, Upper Austria. At the bioethanol and isoglucose factory of Hungrana in Sabadegyhaza, Hungary, a total of 197,000 tonnes of wet corn (prior year: 186,000 tonnes) were processed between 25 August and 11 December 2009. Following the end of the wet corn processing campaign, both plants switched back to processing dry corn.

Between 21 September and 30 October 2009, 12,000 tonnes of wet corn were used for the first time instead of dry corn in the blend of raw materials, which currently consists of approximately 70% wheat, 25% corn and 5% triticale, at the bioethanol plant in Pischelsdorf.