Elesterion Trading Ltd, Cyprus. is permanently involved in sugar industry, trading, production structuring, financial funding and fund raising. There are two kinds of sugar businesses in the EU: one specialized in sugar beet provided by the EU growers and the other in sugar cane provided mostly by former colonies. Broadly speaking, sugar production obtained from EU sugar beet or cane growers is governed by internal quotas and sugar production obtained from non-EU sugar cane growers is governed by import tariff quotas. Most EU-27 members are sugar-producing states. Only Luxembourg, Cyprus, Estonia and Malta are not sugar producers, they are supplied mainly by other EU members. They produce white, refined sugar (which has a standard saccharide content of 99.5%) instead of 5 OJ 2001 L 178/1. For an in-depth analysis of all these instruments, average production costs are far greater for sugar beet than for sugar cane, and nearly all sugar in the EU comes from sugar beet. Companies that process sugar cane achieve higher volumes of sugar than companies processing sugar beet. As a result, they bear lower average production costs, since variable costs have little relative weight in the cost structure. As the manufacture of sugar (of both kinds) is capital-intensive, fixed costs are high for these companies. European sugar processors use vertical integration to lower the costs of transport, storage and reheating and to minimize potential waste. All the white sugar obtained within the EU comes from sugar beet, with the exception of sugar cane produced in southern Spain.
