French sugar intervention board FIRS has produced its first full balance sheet estimate of the 2003/04 season, keeping national beet sugar output unchanged from earlier forecasts of 3.95 million tonnes.
It its latest monthly report, FIRS said the fall in French production compared to the 4.7 million tonnes in 2002/03 was due to a 10.3 percent drop in the area sown combined with a yield of 10.76 tonnes per hectare, just below the recent average.
Consumption was seen at 2.17 million tonnes, the average for the last five seasons, and sales to other European Union countries were put at 720,000 tonnes.
FIRS said the EU sales figures could be revised upwards if the suspension of duty-free imports from Serbia was extended beyond February.
Exports of quota sugar to non-EU countries were estimated at close to one million tonnes, unchanged from 2002/03, but exports of non-quota "C" sugar were lower at 830,000 tonnes against 1.28 million tonnes in 2002/03, FIRS said.
The "C" sugar export figure implied a carry-over into the 2004/05 campaign of 300,000 tonnes, it added.
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