The European Union will open tenders for sugar held in intervention storage in Belgium, France and Sweden for resale into EU markets, its Official Journal said on Thursday.
The tenders relate to sugar accepted into intervention before March 31 and would be for the resale of 52,000 tonnes of white sugar held in Belgium, 136,340 tonnes of white sugar held in France and 59,038 tonnes of raw sugar held in Sweden.
Bidding would take place in regular rounds, starting on August 19 and ending on October 27, the Journal said.
Tenderisers would have to submit minimum bids of 250 tonnes, provide security of 20 euros per 100 kg of white or raw sugar, and would remain anonymous through the bidding process.
Speculation has been rife for months about how the European Commission will handle its growing pile of intervention sugar stocks, which stood at 648,754 tonnes held in eight countries as of July 29 with a further 36,398 tonnes under offer.
But this was eased somewhat when senior Commission officials indicated in June that they would prefer to carry over the sugar until the next marketing season, which has just begun, and had no plans to open any export tenders.
Intervention is a long-established system for supporting farmers where the EU will buy up crops at a minimum price. In February, it was used for sugar for the first time since 1986.
With exporter revenues below the EU intervention price for white sugar, frozen for several years at 632 euros per tonne coupled with the dollar's weakness against the euro it is not unreasonable to use the intervention system, producers say.