DECRYPTAGE – European sugar production is once again in surplus. This is weighing on prices, prompting manufacturers to reduce the prices paid to growers.
In the countryside around Billancourt (Somme), halfway between Compiègne and Noyon, cranes and diggers several meters high are busy at the beginning of November picking up the huge silos of sugar. sugar beet. As is the case every year at this time, the silos typical of the region’s crops are erected on the sides of northern roads, as planters extract their precious tubers from the earth.
Picked up by a daily round of 600 to 700 trucks, these beet will feed the nearby Roye sugar factory, the historic site of Saint Louis Sucre, owned since 2001 by Germany’s Südzucker. Here, beet harvests will be transformed into sugar and sweetening products for European manufacturers and caterers. But also for French consumers, who will find it on the shelves under the famous Saint Louis brand.
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