The rain never came. Two weeks of hoped-for showers arrived as localized thunderstorms that ran off soils too dry to absorb them, and western Europe’s beet belt, France, Belgium, Spain, and the UK, now faces temperatures 3 to 4 degrees above seasonal norms. Low root weight and higher sugar content is the likely result, much like 2024. Germany and Poland have the opposite problem: cooler, damper conditions that back up reports of cercospora in the crop.
Based on current conditions, Vesper puts EU plus UK sugar and ethanol production at 16.10 million tonnes for the coming campaign, down from an estimated 17.2 million tonnes in 2025/26.
A smaller crop would normally support prices. It is not, because the market is sitting on stock. EU stocks were still some 800,000 tonnes higher than the previous marketing year at just under 9.603 million tonnes, and imports have been front-loaded: combined regular and IPR imports already exceed 1 million tonnes in the first seven months of the marketing year, against 1.364 million tonnes for all of 2024/25. The Commission has also been forced to suspend its planned suspension of raw sugar imports for refining, pending a legal challenge.
Producers, meanwhile, want to clear stocks before new-crop sugar arrives, so ex-works prices are static. ABF underlined the mood, forecasting sugar-division losses of £25 to £60 million for its 2026 financial year. The full analysis covers the field picture, trade flows, and what could move prices from here.
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