OREANDA-NEWS. September 11, 2012. Two plants began processing sugar beet of new harvest in Vinnytsia and Ivano-Frankivsk Regions. It has been produced the first 5 thousand tons of sugar. In total this season sugar beet processing will be carried out by 70 plants.

Measures taken by the Government last and this year with a view to removing the sugar beet industry from the crisis have already given the opportunity to stabilize the production of sugar.

This year, area under sugar beet in Ukraine is 466.3 hectares. And we plane to produce 1.8 million tons of sugar.

It should be recalled that last year 2.3 million tons of sugar were produced, which is by 474 thousand tons exceeded domestic needs of the state and made it possible to create an export potential.

For the first time in the last decade the sugar industry has managed to resume the export of sugar, and, according to the State Customs statistics, from September 2011 to August 2012 were shipped to export 150 thousand tons of white sugar in nearly 20 countries. The main importers of Ukrainian sugar are Kazakhstan, Georgia, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Hungary, Croatia and Syria.

One of the starting positions of the industry is namely the restoration of export of Ukrainian beet sugar, increase its competitiveness.