Hellenic Sugar closes two plants in Greece

Greek sugar producer, Hellenic Sugar, decided to close temporary two out of its three plants in Grece, in Ortesiada and Ser, after the business sustainability report generated by consulting company Kantor, Tanjug reports.

After the meeting which lasted for a couple of hours and where they considered the report, the company management board made a decision. Certain number of employees from two closed plants will be transferred to the only open plant near Veria, another part of the staff will be hired in maintenance and one part will be offered to voluntarily leave the plany, Katimerini daily reports.

The workers were dissatisfied with the offer to join the voluntarily leave program due to temporary plant halt while the main creditor of Hellenic Sugar, Piraeus bank, supports closing sinve it will decrease sugar plant business costs, Tanjug reports.

Two sugar plants, Sugar plant Crvenka in Crvenka at Kula and the Sugar plant Sajkaska in Zabalj operate in Serbia within the control of Hellenic Sugar.

Current situation in sugar plant industry is very complex so that these kinds of changes are logical, Sunoko company, which is one of the leaders in this field, think.

- Companies which operate in the south of Europe are in a specifically difficult situation due to high price of sugar beam. Closing down of two companies in Greece is direct consequence of the market situation. Companies which in the previous period did not invest in efficiency increase and this way decreased the costing price, today cannot be competitive – it was stated in the announcement of the Sunoko company.

- In the past seven years, Sunoko poured almost EUR 150 mil in order to increase processing capacities, production cost decrease, energy efficiency increase and environmental protection.

The company says they are not considering purchase of other plants at this moment.