Baku, Azerbaijan, July 12
Trend:
Iran’s sugar beet production reached 8.07 million tons in the last fiscal year, ended March 20, 2018, which indicates a growth of 132 percent in the last five years, Bahman Danaei, secretary of Iran Guild Union for Sugar and Sugar Cube Factories, said.
He added that saccharum harvest also witnessed a 21 percent growth during the 5-year period and accounted to 7.92 million tons in the fiscal year to March 2018, the agriculture ministry’s official website reported.
Iran’s overall sugar output in the last fiscal year surpassed 2.01 million tons, which is a new record in the 123-year history of the country’s sugar industry, Danaei said.
The output has registered an 80 percent growth in the last five years, he added.
Danaei said that sugar production from saccharum accounted to 872,132 tons in last fiscal year, meanwhile the volume for sugar beet was 1.143 million tons.
Meanwhile, Alireza Yazdani, an official with Iran’s Agriculture Ministry, said that the sugar beet purchase from farmers is estimated to reach one million tons in the current year.
So far some 900,000 tons of sugar beets have been purchased from the farmers by the ministry and delivered to sugar factories, Yazdani said.
Iran’s domestic demand for sugar stands at 2.2-2.4 million tons annually. The country supplies its imported sugar mainly from Brazil.
The main provinces producing sugar in the country are Khuzestan, West Azarbaijan and Khorasan Razavi.
