Iacek Ludviciac, head of the technical department of the Moldovan-Polish company Moldova Zahăr, told Logos Press that due to the impossibility to organize a rhythmic beet harvesting process in the weather conditions of the second half of autumn, the sugar factory in Cupcini was stopped in mid-November. “We follow weather forecasts every day, but so far there is no consoling news – it is a very difficult season,” says the quoted source.
Moldova’s sugar beet industry is trying to survive one of the most difficult seasons in the quinquennium. First, spring frosts necessitated reseeding more than 5,000 dead sugar beet crops. Precipitation in the first half of the fall gave hope – it made it possible to forecast a good sugar beet harvest and a large sugar output. However, then there was a chain of events that will adjust the results of the season, and not for the better.
According to experts, in favorable weather conditions in September, the harvesting campaign unfolded slowly in the raw material zones of both sugar enterprises in Moldova. Heavy precipitation in October further reduced the harvesting pace, heavy machinery could not enter the wet fields. Due to disruptions in beet delivery, the sugar mills periodically suspended operations this month.
In addition, in November, an important production area (gas furnace) failed at the plant of a sugar company. Technical experts, former employees of the company, believe that “the malfunction could have been the result of insufficient preparation for the processing campaign”. If proper resources are mobilized, the production process may well resume by the end of December. The only question is whether the beet harvesters will be able to get out into the fields in the coming weeks.
So far the weather is not favorable for this. In October-November, up to 250 mm of rain fell in some northern regions of the country. Farmers say that “the fields are still swampy”. Well-developed beet haulm does not help the soil to dry out. Light frosts would help, but they are not expected before the end of the second week of December. According to some weather forecasts, December in the country will be warm at all.
In this situation, the harvesting of sugar beet will certainly be delayed for a favorable “weather window” in January. But, as agronomists note in this regard, “winter harvesting of sugar beets means progressively growing risks of sugar content reduction, resulting in lower sugar yields and higher production costs”.
Based on the experience of a number of countries that previously actively practiced sugar beet harvesting and processing in December and February, this process was associated with losses of at least 20% of the basic sugar content in root crops.
According to the sugar market players in Moldova, “all this suggests that the introduction of measures to protect the Moldovan sugar market by the previous government was based on hasty and overly optimistic forecasts. In their opinion, the forecast of sugar producers that about 78 thousand tons will be produced this season, “can already be reduced to 45 thousand tons – in the worst production scenario, and then sugar prices in Moldova will definitely remain the highest in Europe – without preconditions for their reduction”.
