Greece's Hellenic Sugar Industry told Serbian daily Dnevnik that it plans to invite international bids for its sugar plants in Serbia, but that a date has not yet been set.
The sugar company expects that the buyer for its two refineries in Žabalj and Crvenka will be global industry leaders from Brazil or Germany.
Spokesperson Christos Alexopoulos added that the value of the two Serbian refineries has grown to about €100 million over the past two years.
The newspaper reported, citing unofficial information, that the most serious suitor for Hellenic Sugar’s Serbian plants could be Austria’s Agrana, which is owned by Germany’s Südzucker, Europe’s largest sugar producer.
However, Alexopoulos told the daily that Agrana has not expressed interest in the acquisition.
According to previous reports, Agrana intends to forge a strategic partnership with shareholders of Serbia’s biggest sugar firm, Sunoko, and has signed 'a term sheet with regard to achieving agreement about majority participation.'
Sunoko, which owns sugar refineries in Vrbas, Pečinci, and Kovačica, is the only other player in the Serbian market, given that it has received a conditional approval from the competition protection commission earlier this year to buy Senta-based Star Šečer, which operates sugar plant TE-TO.
According to earlier reports, Sunoko, part of Serbian banking-to-agribusiness company MK Group, was buying TE-TO from Italy’s SFIR.
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Branislav Pekic. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
