Ukraine's Astarta using five sugar refineries in 2023/2024 season, production growing

MOSCOW. Nov 10 (Interfax) - Astarta agro industrial holding, Ukraine's largest sugar producer, is raising output compared with last year.

Ukrainian media reported with reference to a company filing with the Warsaw Stock Exchange that Astarta launched its September 2023/August 2024 sugar refining season on September 12, and five sugar refineries were in operation.

As of November 8, the company's sugar plants had processed 1.3 million tonnes of sugar beet and produced 171,000 tonnes of white sugar, compared to 146,000 tonnes on the same date in 2022.

To date, corn and sugar beet harvesting are two-thirds complete.

The holding said 10 million tonnes of sugar beet had already been harvested in Ukraine with an average yield of 48 t/ha. It said 30 refineries were engaged in sugar production in the 2023/2024 season; as of November 8, the country produced a total of 0.8 million tonnes of sugar.

In addition, the group has almost finished harvesting oilseeds. The gross sunflower harvest currently amounts to 83,000 tonnes with yield of 3 t/ha, which corresponds to last year, and soybeans to 169,000 tonnes with a yield of 3.1 t/ha, up 6%.

This year the share of winter crops is 29% of the total crop area. Winter wheat was sown on 49,000 ha, up 14% year-on-year, and winter rapeseed on 12,000 ha, down 12%.

"The winter wheat area was adjusted during the sowing campaign from a planned 54,000 ha to 49,000 ha in order to complete the sowing campaign with ideal timing," the holding said.

Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding that includes sugar factories, agricultural enterprises, dairy farms, an oil extraction plant, grain elevators, and a biogas complex.