Russia to raise sugar output

The Russian Sugar Producers Union, the industry lobby, expects the country's sugar refining to rise to 5.6-5.8 million tonnes in the calendar year of 2010, up from 5.05 million tonnes in 2009, the lobby said on Monday. It expects sugar refining from imported cane raws to rise to 2.1 million tonnes this year from 1.77 million last year and refining from domestic beets to grow up to 3.7 million tonnes from 3.28 million, the union said in a statement.
The head of the union Andrei Bodin told Reuters in an interview last month that he expected raw sugar imports by the world's No 2 sugar buyer to double in 2010 to 2.25 million tonnes next year. The union forecasts sugar refining from this year's beet crop to be 3.25 million tonnes, down from last year's record 3.55 million tonnes. Output of beet sugar in the 12 months of the year includes part of sugar refined from previous year's beet crop. Last year the country stopped processing the 2008.