Suedzucker expects tough sugar market to continue in new fiscal year (updated)

Suedzucker AG

21/05/2026 13:22

Adds CEO comments

HAMBURG, May 21 (Reuters) - Suedzucker , Europe's largest sugar producer, on Thursday said it expected the depressed sugar market to continue in its new 2026/27 fiscal year.

“We expect declining sugar production and sales volumes due to the already reduced sugar beet cultivation areas,” the company said.

Weak sugar prices did not recover over the course of the 2025/26 financial year starting in March as a result of a better than expected harvest, it said, after posting results for the 12 months.

“We also do not expect any significant improvement in the current 2026/27 financial year...Against this background, we anticipate a substantial overall decline in revenue compared with the previous year."

Sugar futures fell to five-year lows in April on ample global supplies.

Suedzucker said it expects earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation in its sugar sector to range from a loss of 60 million euros ($69.76 million) to a profit of 40 million euros in 2026/27, versus a loss of 17 million euros in 2025/26.

Suedzucker said on May 13 it expected a “significant increase” in EBITDA in its first quarter to end May.

“The expected improvement in first-quarter results is partly due to higher bioethanol prices achieved by our CropEnergies biofuels unit,” CEO Niels Poerksen told Reuters.

Bioethanol and other energy prices rose worldwide after the start of the Iran war.

Poerksen added that corporate efficiency and cost-cutting programmes introduced in the last year had also contributed to the improvement, adding: “Falling prices for raw sugar have also started to reflect the low prices we are achieving in the market for white sugar.”

Suedzucker Group has no current plans to further close production capacity, he said.

(Reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus, Kirsten Donovan)

((michael.j.hogan@thomsonreuters.com ; +49 172 671 36 54; Reuters Messaging: michael.hogan.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))