Extreme market conditions – strong strategic focus
As recently as last summer, we had anticipated a recovery in sugar prices by autumn 2025. Then, for the second year running, a particularly high-yielding sugar beet harvest in Europe was forecast, driven by weather conditions. Timely reductions in acreage did not protect us from another high production volume. This added to the sugar volume from the previous year’s record harvest. As a result, sugar stocks across the entire EU market became significantly too high, and the price adjustments we needed – which would have had a positive impact on our results – failed to materialise. Although our excellence programmes, which we had intensified at an early stage with the aim of reducing costs, began to show initial effects, they were unable to offset the impact of low prices coupled with high raw material and energy costs that were virtually beyond our control.
Read about this and more in our latest annual report.
