Coupled with lower production costs and energy savings, Hellenic Sugar is on route to achieving sustainable development that will create conditions for new jobs and ensure higher revenue, more exports and a more significant contribution to the overall development of agriculture in Serbia
Hellenic Sugar Industry is a regional group of companies from Greece and Serbia that owns sugar factories in Crvenka and Žabalj. The Group now undoubtedly has the potential to become one of the Balkans biggest sugar producers and suppliers.
Our long history, accumulated experience, know-how and skills provide Hellenic Sugar with enough courage to look to the future with optimism and to plan our further development.
During last year’s sugar beet campaign, Hellenic Sugar decided to work on covering more land with sugar beet plantations. The company also increased the base purchase price of sugar beet, involving scientific institutions in the process and investing in production facilities, in the hope that all of these efforts will yield results.
To this aim, the company launched a rather ambitious long-term project – in cooperation with scientific institutions, the agriculture faculties in Belgrade and Novi Sad, and the agricultural school in Sombor – with the goal of achieving a production level far beyond 10 tonnes of sugar per hectare of land, which is comparable to the best performances in Europe.
This industry stands firmly on its own feet and neither relies on any subsidies nor receives any privileges. Apart from completely covering demand on the domestic market, it also exports substantial quantities of sugar to the EU and CEFTA countries
The aim of this project is to increase both the yield and quality of sugar beet and to boost the competitiveness of the Serbian sugar industry with the end result of an increase in revenue for sugar beet farmers. Another goal is to provide professional advice to sugar beet farmers on how to increase sugar beet yields per hectare and to improve the quality and quantity of yields.
Considering regional demand for sugar and the amount of sugar that the Serbian sugar industry produces, the conclusion is that there is a lot of room for further development.
This industry stands firmly on its own feet and neither relies on any subsidies nor receives any privileges. Apart from completely covering demand on the domestic market, it also exports substantial quantities of sugar to the EU and CEFTA countries. Sugar is the second biggest export commodity after maize and a hectare of sugar beet accounts for much higher export than a hectare of cereals, which means that sugar has a much higher added value.
In order to set off for this journey, we need to constantly and rapidly boost our competitiveness. There is a lot of space for us to improve the yields and digestion, reduce the cost per tonne of sugar beet and simultaneously increase revenues and profits per hectare, which will create hundreds of new jobs and ensure higher revenues, more exports and a more significant contribution to the overall development of agriculture in Serbia.