Dark clouds have gathered over the more than 140-year-old sugar factory in Nakskov. Following Nordic Sugar’s announcement that production in the town will end, the site is to be converted into a packaging and distribution centre, while sugar production moves to Nykøbing.
That means sugar production on Lolland is drawing to a close, with Nykøbing becoming the only town on Lolland-Falster that will continue to produce sugar.
The closure follows a historically poor financial year for German group Nordzucker, the owner of Nordic Sugar. The group reported an operating loss of EUR 226 million, equivalent to just under DKK 1.7 billion, compared with an operating profit of EUR 100.5 million the year before. The result does include negative one-off effects of around EUR 160 million in Europe, but Nordzucker itself describes the result as historically low.
The accounts, however, tell only part of the story.
The entire European sugar market is under pressure, partly after two unusually strong harvests in succession created a substantial oversupply, filled stocks and pushed prices sharply lower. According to the European Commission, the average price of white sugar in the EU fell from EUR 619 per tonne in October 2024 to EUR 501 in June this year.
Pressure from the global market
At the same time, pressure is also coming from abroad. High production volumes on the global market have helped drive world sugar prices lower, while the EU continues to import significant quantities of sugar. Nordzucker itself points to lower world market prices as one of the factors that has intensified pressure on the European market.
In the European Commission’s latest estimate, total EU sugar imports in the 2025/26 marketing year are expected to reach around 1.73 million tonnes. By comparison, the EU’s own production is forecast at around 16.58 million tonnes, while consumption is expected to be around 13.45 million tonnes.
Some imported sugar can also enter the European market under preferential tariff arrangements. As recently as April, the European Commission intervened in a scheme that allowed raw sugar to be imported into the EU duty-free for refining and subsequent re-export. The Commission explicitly said the move was intended to ease pressure on the European sugar market and improve the balance between supply and demand.
All this is happening while stocks have also risen sharply. The European Commission expects sugar stocks – meaning sugar that has been produced but not yet sold or consumed – to reach around 3.06 million tonnes at the end of the 2025/26 marketing year, compared with 2.3 million tonnes the year before.
The result is a situation in which earnings are falling at the same time as there is more production capacity than the market can absorb. That naturally means individual factories are being compared more closely with one another – and Nakskov was in a weak position.
When Nordzucker reviewed its factories, the group identified Nakskov as the plant where a closure would have the greatest impact. According to the company, a key reason was that the Nakskov factory would require significantly greater investment than the group’s other plants in order to remain efficient and profitable in the long term.
The poor financial result and depressed sugar prices therefore do not, by themselves, explain why Nakskov was selected. But they help explain why Nordzucker began cutting back its production network in the first place. In that process, Nakskov’s investment requirements became decisive.
Nakskov is not alone
According to the European industry organisations CEFS and CIBE, five beet sugar factories have closed since the 2024/25 campaign, and a total of 20 factories have disappeared across the EU since sugar quotas were abolished in 2017.
In Spain, Azucarera has concentrated production at fewer sites after persistently low European sugar prices and structurally high costs. The company has reduced its beet sugar production from three plants to one.
AGRANA has also closed sugar factories in Austria and the Czech Republic. The company points, among other things, to low selling prices, rising production costs and declining sugar consumption as reasons for consolidating production at fewer plants.
Nordzucker has already taken similar steps elsewhere in the group. Sugar production has been discontinued in Slovakia, where the site will continue as a commercial and logistics hub, while a subsidiary in Finland is ending raw sugar refining at one of its facilities.
In other words, the end of sugar production in Nakskov is not simply a story about a poor financial result. It is also the story of a group under pressure and a market with too much sugar, too much production capacity and prices under strain.
And in that equation, Nakskov was the factory that lost out.
