Europe on the brink of sugar deluge as quotas end.

Europe is about to get a lot sweeter. After a decade of quotas, sugar firms in the European Union can now produce and export as much as they want. Companies such as France’s Tereos and Germany’s Suedzucker AG have been ramping up operations to get ready for the change, which will help fuel a global sugar glut. The scrapping of quotas may also lead to major changes in the global sugar trade. With increased EU production, there will be less need to import supplies from places like Africa and the Caribbean. While the industry has been readying for the change for years, it may further pressure prices that have dropped 28 percent in 2017, the worst performance in a Bloomberg index of 22 commodities. In the EU, the sugar-beet harvest is now in full swing and tests are showing higher-than-average yields in France and Germany, the region’s top growers.