OREANDA-NEWS. October 26, 2011. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) and its regional offices analyze the situation related to overproduction of sugar beets in 2011 and refusals of sugar plants in some provinces to conclude contracts with agricultural producers for supplying products, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

The antimonopoly bodies started initiating such analysis in order to prevent infringing legitimate interests of economic entities – suppliers of sugar beets and due to numerous petitions to the antimonopoly bodies.

Preliminary findings of Tambov OFAS Russia showed that sugar plants in the province operate at full capacity, and in some cases even exceeding designed capacity.

According to agricultural producers in the Tambov region, the expected croppage of sugar beets in the region is 4.2-4.5 million tons, capacity of existing sugar plants with available load for 100-120 days (the period of possible beet storage without loss of quality) – no more that 2.5-3.0 5 million tons.

A similar situation is also observed in the Voronezh region and in some other Russian provinces.

“Unprecedented harvest of sugar beets in 2011 allows assuming with high degree of probability that there will be no significant increase of sugar prices next year”, explained the Head of FAS Department for Control over Chemical Industry and Agro-Industrial Complex, Teimuraz Kharitonashvili.

On the basis of the information available today, the antimonopoly bodies have no grounds to conclude that actions of sugar plants were in violation of the antimonopoly law.

Currently FAS requested additional information, upon analysis of which the antimonopoly bodies will consider whether sugar plants violated the antimonopoly laws.

At the same time, FAS instructed its regional bodies to thoroughly study an extraordinary situation on the market of sugar beets, associated with significant harvest of beets in 2011, particularly, taking into consideration the existing processing capacity of sugar plants and for processing the degree of capacity utilization.