The biggest sugar beet grower in the center of Transylvania, Teodor Aflat, said on Thursday that the Luduş Sugar Factory will resume its activity and that the farmers of Mureş and the neighboring counties will thus be able to resume sugar beet crops in this fall and next spring.
“Due to the fact that we signed the confidentiality agreement, we cannot talk much. The works are on a good track and the Factory in Ludus will be restored and we hope that from this autumn or from the spring of 2023, the growers from Ludus, Brasov, I know, Cluj, Sibiu will start the cultivation of sugar beet again”, he declared Teodor Aflat press.
The offer of the group of farmers from nine counties of Transylvania to the French patronage of the Tereos SA group, which until now owned the Luduş factory, was the purchase of over 98% of the shares.
Teodor Aflat stated that this year the price of sugar beet is very good and that he still hopes that this price will be much better, following the continuation of the activity of the factory in Luduş.
“The first step is taken towards the agreement we wanted. As far as I understand, yes, indeed, it is a first”, said Teodor Aflat, who added that many sugar beet farmers had already lost hope regarding the continuation of the activity in the Ludus processing plant.
The farmer also showed that in the counties of central Transylvania there are hundreds of beet growers who depend on this factory, only in the Union of Beet Growers from Luduş there are over 300 members.
Two weeks ago, Sindicatul Liber Zaharul Luduş SA informed that it was announced by the patronage of the Luduş Sugar Factory, Tereos Romania SA, that the plan to liquidate and demolish the facility is continuing, after the Romanian state allegedly withdrew from the negotiations and no buyer was found. Later, information appeared in the central press about the resumption of negotiations between the French employer and a group of beet farmers for their takeover of the Luduş factory.
In the Government meeting of May 4, 2022, a Memorandum was approved by which the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development had been mandated to start negotiations to maintain the activity of the sugar factory in Luduş – SC Tereos RO SA.
The mandate took place in the context of the decision announced by the Tereos Group, which owns one of the last two factories processing beet sugar in Romania, to close the factory located in Luduş, which has been operating for over 60 years.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR) announced, at the end of May, that it had meetings with the management of the Tereos Romania company, to present the constituted negotiation team and to establish a calendar regarding the takeover of the Luduş sugar factory.
For his part, Francois Queva, CEO of Tereos Romania, denied all the rumors circulating in the public space related to the closure of the factory, noting that the commitment made before the minister, as early as April, regarding the availability of the sale of this production unit to the Romanian state remained unchanged . Also, the representative of the French company emphasized that no component of the factory was dismantled, decommissioned or sold, the MADR press release from May showed.
According to the MADR information from that moment, both parties agreed on a timetable for taking over the investment, taking into account the need to save jobs for the staff employed in the Luduş sugar factory.
Until the year 2021, the sugar obtained from sugar beet grown in Romania has ensured approximately 25% of the domestic consumption requirement of 500,000 tons of sugar/year.
(www.agerpres.ro)
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