Sugar is ‘white gold’ again, but will Ukraine have enough?

Ukrainian sugar is helping offset the ‘sweet’ deficit in Europe. Ukraine’s sugar exports rose to 427,000 tonnes in a year since last October—and could have been even higher but for the government’s limit in order to keep some for domestic consumption.

Ukraine mostly exports sugar to Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary—the very countries that unilaterally limit imports of Ukrainian grains and oilseeds. ‘White gold’, however, is an exception.

A sweet hole

The EU has a sugar problem: Domestic producers in France, Germany, and Poland have no raw materials because of the poor harvest that has plagued European beet for the second year in a row.