The European Commission's crop monitoring unit MARS said in its November bulletin Monday that even though the sugar beet harvest has progressed well in the UK and France, it has been delayed in many other European regions to allow crops to recover from the adverse summer conditions.
The dry weather of the summer continued over October 1-November 18, with a "strong rainfall deficit...in Southeastern Europe, Germany and eastern France".
As a result of the delayed arrival of the new crop and the lower yields than a year earlier, domestic prices have rallied.
Domestic delivered prices for Northwest Europe and the Mediterranean were assessed Friday at Eur384/mt ($435/mt) and Eur403/mt respectively compared with Eur322/mt and Eur340/mt on October 19.
In its September bulletin, MARS revised its final sugar beet yield forecast for Europe down to 72.7 mt/hectare, 2.8% below the five-year average of 74.9 mt/ha.
In the last week, another challenge presented itself. After the dry and warm weather, a cold snap arrived. "Slightly colder-than-usual weather conditions... with negative daily mean temperature anomalies" are expected to continue in most of Europe for the upcoming week, and daily minimum temperatures will range between zero and 10 degrees Celsius, MARS said.
"Farmers are making an effort to harvest as much as possible before frosts and snow potentially cause further problems," it added. This was confirmed by Belgian beet science institute IRBAB-KBIVB which warned "if the necks of the beets are frozen, [then farmers must] wait a few days to allow the tissues of the beet to recover." Low temperatures followed by a sudden thaw can cause plants to rot.
With sugar production in Europe set to fall by 2 million-3 million mt on the year from 21 million mt in 2017-18 (October-September) due to these weather conditions, sugar will be in tighter supply this season, meaning exports, which totaled 3.3 million mt in the 2017-18 campaign, will probably be lower.
