Unsweet Prospects For Belarusian Sugar Exporters
- 17.12.2025, 11:26
Russia has nowhere to put its own.
The record sugar beet harvest of 5 million tons, which Belarus is so proud of, turned out to be not quite in time. The fact is that the main export market, Russia, has a surplus of sugar, which is getting cheaper for this reason. New batches, old stocks and imports from Belarus are already pressing and will continue to press on prices, sharply reducing the return for Belarusian agrarians and processors, writes "Belarusians and the market".
In 2025, Russia will produce more than 6.4 million tons of sugar. This is almost as much as last season - 6.37 million tons, Forbes writes with reference to the leading expert of the Institute of Agricultural Market Conjuncture (IKAR) Evgeny Ivanov.
But Russian producers have no reason to rejoice.
With domestic consumption in the range of 5.6-5.7 million tons, imports of about 0.3 million tons (mainly from Belarus) and old stocks (some batches are already eight years old) of 0.35 million tons, Russia needs to export 1.4-1.5 million tons to reduce the pressure on the domestic market. But it managed to sell such a volume (1.44 million tons) abroad only once - in the season 2019/2020.
At the end of the day, it turns out that when the market is oversaturated, the price of sugar goes down, reducing the profitability of both agrarians and processors. Including the Belarusian ones.
If in 2023 the average annual producer prices for sugar amounted to Br49.5 thousand per ton, in 2024 - Br51.8 thousand, then in 2025 there is a steady decline. In October, a ton cost an average of 42.2 thousand Russian rubles (almost 20% lower than a year earlier), and in early December - 43.9 thousand rubles (15% lower than last year's level).
And even if Russian producers have solved internal issues with export (built the same terminals in the ports), there is a lot of external ones.
One of the main ones is the ongoing decline in world sugar prices for many years. The current ones, according to the Russian association "Soyuzrossakhar", are now at the minimum five-year values. The surplus of the world market in the current season, according to the organization, is 4.2 million tons (against a deficit of 1.3 million tons last season). And will grow in the -2025/2026 season due to the activity of India and Thailand.
And, secondly, the world market for white sugar is strictly regulated in terms of access to it. The fact is that many countries themselves produce sugar from cheap South American cane and therefore strictly protect their own companies. It is very difficult to sell the surplus.
The same problems equally apply to Belarusians. With its production of 650-660 thousand tons, the domestic market can "digest" 330-360 thousand tons. The rest goes to Russia (about 200 thousand tons) and, as a rule, to the post-Soviet countries.
Last year the Belarusian Sugar Company, which represents the interests of 4 Belarusian factories in Russia, increased both sales (by more than 30% to 13.1 billion Russian rubles) and profit (by 23% to almost 70 million).
In 2026, it seems, it will be not about growth, but about survival in the current conditions.