HAMBURG (Reuters) -Europe’s largest sugar producer Suedzucker reported on Thursday an 82% fall in quarterly operating profit as it continued to face weak EU sugar markets.
The German company said operating profit in June-August, the second quarter of its 2025/26 fiscal year, totalled 20 million euros ($23.29 million), down from 114 million euros in the same quarter the previous year.
Cost reductions were not enough to compensate for low sugar prices in the European Union while exports also fell, it said.
Suedzucker confirmed its reduced forecast of full-year 2025/26 operating profits of between 100 and 200 million euros, down from 350 million last year.
Suedzucker’s core sugar sector made a second quarter operating loss of 33 million euros against an operating profit of 13 million euros in last year’s second quarter.
EU data says average EU sugar prices fell to 534 euros a metric ton in July 2025 from 775 euros in July 2024 although the EU restricted cheap Ukrainian sugar imports following protests by farmers.
“EU sugar prices remain under pressure and the market environment therefore remains challenging,” a Suedzucker spokesperson said. “This is despite EU restrictions on sugar imports from Ukraine. The EU now plans to increase again the permitted import volume from Ukraine to 100,000 (metric) tons.”
Suedzucker said that with market conditions remaining difficult, it still expects a loss in the sugar sector in the second half of the year.
“We have reduced our sugar beet planted area this season to compensate for this, and figures show other European producers have done so too,” the spokesperson added.
“But growing conditions for beets are better than expected leading to expectations of higher crop yields, which could reduce some of the benefits of the reduced crop area.”
($1 = 0.8587 euros)
(Reporting by Michael Hogan, editing by Friederike Heine and Susan Fenton)
