Erstein (France) (AFP) –
Published on: 06/11/2026 - 10:34
Declining yield and quality, increasing additives and costs: at the Erstein sugar refinery (Bas-Rhin), where the beet crushing season is in full swing, the summer drought is resulting in a drop in sugar production, even if the worst has been avoided thanks to expensive irrigation.
In the surrounding countryside, impressive mounds of beets left at the edge of the fields wait to be transported by truck to the factory where they will be transformed into sugar, alcohol or ethanol.
And on site, in this “medium-sized” sugar factory where the ground sticks to the soles and the sweet smell permeates the clothes, the whirring machines devour nearly 6,000 tonnes of beets every day.
However, some planters in Alsace have seen their harvests fall by half as a result of the drought, according to the sugar group Cristal Union, owner of the site, which estimates the average drop in yields nationally at 25%, with strong disparities depending on the region.
Due to lack of stock, the activity of the only sugar factory in Alsace will last only 81 days this year, compared to 122 last year.
A similar fate awaits "a large number" of the 18 other French sugar factories, according to the Interprofessional Association of Beet and Sugar (AIBS), which describes a "catastrophic campaign" and anticipates an increase in the price of sugar.
Complex transformation
The world's second largest producer of beet sugar - a crop developed under Napoleon to replace cane sugar - France produced 4.64 million tonnes last year, according to AIBS. It is still too early to measure the extent of the decline expected this year, as harvesting is still underway.
Beyond yields, the drought has also reduced the "quality" of the roots received by the sugar factories, which are now "much more complex" to process, observes the director of the Erstein site, Ervin Szokola.
As the processing cycles are "longer", the factory must slow down its production rate and use "many more chemicals" to refine its product, which is "very expensive", he continues.
In this "complicated" and "extreme" year, the sugar factory therefore has "fewer beets to work with, more fixed costs, a shorter campaign" and, in the end, production "expected to decline", laments the director of Erstein.
“Slowing down the process also requires more energy, so effectively, it increases the fixed costs of the sugar factory,” explains the director of the AIBS, Thierry Gokelaere.
Expensive irrigation
When they arrive at the Erstein site, some beets are the size of a rugby ball, and others, more numerous, are the size of a tennis ball.
“In my long career,” “I had never seen” such discrepancies, admits Mr. Szokola, who attributes them to the provision or absence of irrigation.
In Scherwiller, a village located around thirty kilometers from the sugar factory, farmer Gérard Lorber explains that he watered his 47 hectares twice as much as usual due to droughts, which allowed him to obtain "an honorable yield".
Result: he hopes to harvest 16 tonnes of sugar per hectare, whereas "without irrigation", he would have only obtained 3.
The fact remains that, given the very high price of diesel which fuels its agricultural machinery, its “water towers” “represent large budgets”.
In the long term, however, irrigation will be more and more essential, believes the beet grower, who therefore calls for "electrifying as much as possible" the equipment "so that tomorrow we still have production in this country".
© 2026 AFP
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