OREANDA-NEWS. December 14, 2010. Razgulay Group in 2010 maintains a stable leading position on the harvesting of sugar beet, despite the anomalous heat and drought. Expected volume of sugar beet harvesting is at the last year level and totals about 3 million tones, reported the press-centre of Razgulay.

For example, in early November, only "Tikhoretsky" sugar refinery prepared 500 tonnes of sugar beets and got 50 thousand tonnes of sugar from the beginning of the period of 2010. Agricultural holding achieved such results through timely optimization campaign of providing raw for sugar mills. First of all, there has been improved the work with sugar beet producers for which, it was offered a convenient system of advance payments, and performance of the precise control of contracts execution.

For the production of beet sugar Razgulay is on the 3rd place among the largest players in the market, though high sugar content of beets in some regions can improve the position of agricultural holdings. So, just for the Krasnodarsky Krai the current year's figures of the Company are to exceed 105 thousand tonnes.

For comparison, last year the volume of produced sugar (raw and white) in the Krasnodarsky Krai amounted more than 82 thousand tonnes, representing 15% of the total sugar, worked out of the holding’s mills last year. In 2009 Razgulay Group sugar factories produced 438.8 thousand tonnes of sugar. We expect that the share of the holding in the Russian market of sugar production in 2010 will increase compared with the previous year from 13.8% to 14.1%.

Largest consumers of sugar produced by the Razgulay Group are Mars Inc., Chipita Russia, OJSC "Krasny Oktyabr’", OJSC "Babaevskiy", CJSC "Glavprodukt-prompererabotka", LLC "Region-Tomsk", LLC "Progress-Agro" , LLC "Sibaltorg", CJSC "Citadel", CJSC "Parus-Plus", and wholesale companies.

In 2010 investments in agro-holding sugar area reached 700 million rubles. Fixed assets were used to purchase and install new equipment (centrifuges, chamber filter presses, bagasse presses, etc.) of the world's leading manufacturers - Putsch Nerva (Spain), BMA (Germany), Babbini (Italy) and others. Recoupment of investments is 3-4 years. According to Victor Sukhinov, CEO of Razgulay: "Modernization of production capacity will greatly improve efficiency at all stages of work, that will significantly increase the productivity of plants. Since sugar is one of the priorities of the investment plans of the Group, our new strategy is largely focused on the development and improvement of Razgulay’s sugar business".