Agrana Records Good Yields

17/01/07 Agrana has reported that its beet campaign, which ended on January 6, 2007 at the Austrian sugar plant Tulln and on January 8, 2007 in Leopoldsdorf resulted in the extraction of roughly 407,600 (2005|06: 488,900) tons of sugar from approximately 2.5 (2005|06: 3.1) million tons of sugar beets. Since beets were processed only in Tulln and Leopoldsdorf, the campaign lasted 99 processing days - or 21 days longer than in the previous year. “The concentration on sugar extraction at these two locations allowed AGRANA to improve the utilization of capacity and thereby realize important cost savings. It also demonstrates that the extraction of sugar from domestic beets in Austrian plants can be competitive, even under the new EU sugar CMO“, commented AGRANA CEO Johann Marihart on the results of this year’s sugar campaign.

After record yields in the past year, the 2006 beet harvest was slightly above average. However, the soil tare was very low due to the dry autumn weather. The sugar content for the 2006 campaign reached 17.9%, which represents an increase over the prior year value of 17.1%. The two Austrian plants processed an average of 25,800 tons per day in 2006 (2005|06: 40,100 t in 3 plants).

In this year’s campaign, the AGRANA Group extracted approximately 749,500 (2005|06: 895,400) tons of sugar from roughly 4,741,000 (2005|06: 5,894,000) tons of beets. This not only fulfilled the reduced quota of 621,566 tons of sugar, but also the industrial sugar contracts that were concluded for the first time in spring 2006. The lower surplus in comparison to the prior year reflects the lack of export opportunities resulting from limits imposed by the WTO.

Moreover, approximately 220,000 tons of sugar will be produced from raw sugar refining in Romania by the end of February 2007 (2005|06: 282,000 tons). The total sugar production by AGRANA reached nearly 1.0 million tons in 2006|07 (2005|06: 1.2 million tons).

Romania joined the European Union on January 1, 2007. The country received a production quota of 329,600 tons of raw sugar and 109,200 tons of beet sugar, which reflects the average value of the reference years. The share allotted to AGRANA represents roughly 22% of the sugar beet quota and approximately 40% of the raw sugar quota.

The processing of starch potatoes at Austria’s only potato starch plant in Gmünd ended on December 23, 2006. The area under cultivation in 2006|07 totaled approximately 6,200 (2005|06: 6,500) hectares. Approximately 187,400 (2005|06: 245,800) tons of industrial starch potatoes were processed on 116 campaign days, and yielded 41,100 tons of potato starch. The favorable autumn weather led to an increase in the starch content of the potatoes to 19.0%, compared to 18.3% in the previous year. AGRANA fulfilled 92% of its quota, but still exceeded the EU average of 85%.

In 2006|07 the AGRANA corn starch plant in Aschach, Austria, processed approximately 84,000 (2005|06: 86,000) tons of freshly harvested wet corn. The daily volume increased from 1,000 tons to 1,200 tons with the start-up of facilities at the Aschach plant, and allowed for the processing of nearly the same quantity as in the previous year despite a shorter harvest period. The processing method has since been converted back to dry corn.