‘An increase in sugar prices destabilizes the production but this could actually become our competitive advantage: our plant managed to keep up the regular output due to some reserve and, more importantly, we could afford not to raise the prices whereas most of the other producers had their prices go up by an average of 33% shortly after New Year (the average seasonal increase being only 5%). We are now targeted at sticking with the price segment we are currently in,’ Sales Manager of Confectionery of Vishnevogorsk (Chelyabinsk Region) Yana Stroeva said to UrBC representative.

‘It’s too early to make any long-term predictions but, should this price uncertainty last for while, this may lead to the plant making less money and going down on output, which, in the long run, is going to affect the customers,’ Ms Stroeva noted.

As for the sugar market experts, they believe sugar isn’t going to become cheaper any time soon. As the leading analyst of Agricultural Market Condition Institute Evgeniy Ivanov explains, sugar was sold at $ 502 per ton in Moscow on December 9, 2005 but the price had already soared up to $ 640 by as early as January 17, 2006. The same is true of Krasnodar ($ 483 to $ 597 per ton over the same period). What is more, the prices are to become even more dependent on the global ones after Russia runs out of sugar made from white beet, reports Interfax.