“It is only when the price of sugar stabilizes that we will consider plans for further expansion,” CFO of the Austrian sugar, starch and fruit producer Agrana, Stephan Buettner, has said.
The Austrian sugar manufacturer had planned to enter the Serbian market before the prices of sugar dropped in the world markets.
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“The current price of sugar makes further acquisitions impossible,” Buettner explained in his statement for APA.
“Only when the price of sugar stabilizes will Agrana start considering acquisitions again,” he said and added that would not happen for at least one or two years.
In 2016, Agrana decided to expand, and in 2017, it was given permission by the Serbian authorities to take over the biggest Serbian sugar manufacturer, Sunoko. Those plans were then stopped due to the drop in the price of sugar.
Sunoko owns sugar plants in Vrbas, Pecinci and Kovacica, and the company has a 74% share in the Serbian market with its annual production of nearly 300,000 tonnes of sugar.
Agrana is the regional leader in the production of sugar and is a member of the biggest sugar manufacturer in Europe, Germany’s Sudzucker. It operates in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Serbia, where it has a share in the sale of sugar of under 1%.
(Blic, 20.03.2019)
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