Alberta Sugar Beet Growers inks five-year contract with Lantic

Posted on June 5, 2025 by admin

By Cal Braid
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

  On May 9, the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers (ASBG) announced that it had secured a new five-year contract with Lantic Inc. ASBG is the local marketing board that represents 200 farm families who grow the sugar beets processed at the Lantic factory in Taber.

  In a statement, ASBG President Gary Tokariuk said, “Sugar beets have been grown in southern Alberta for over 100 years, becoming a cornerstone of our region’s agricultural legacy. Farming is a family business that depends on long-term vision, sustainability, and profitability. This agreement not only honors a century of growing but ensures that our growers can continue producing 100 per cent Canadian sugar for generations to come.”

  Mike Walton, president and CEO of Lantic and Rogers Sugar Inc., said, “We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the ASBG for another five years. This agreement will help support the needs of our customers in Western Canada.”

  The details in the news release were scarce, and the Times contacted Tokariuk for more information. In the local sugar business, Lantic contracts the ASBG to grow a set number of acres; from there, the ASBG allocates quotas to individual farmers accordingly. Tokariuk said that under the contract with Lantic, acres can fluctuate year to year depending on a number of factors that are beyond the control of the ASBG and its growers.

  “We’re down to 22,500 from 28,000,” he said of the acres Lantic requested for 2025. The acres dipped this year, and Tokariuk said that could be the result of the market and the sales that Lantic have already negotiated for the year. By November 1, ASBG typically has its quote for the next year’s acres from Lantic.

  As for the markets, he said southern Alberta exports about 25,000 metric tons of sugar into the US, but the bulk of it is distributed to industrial and grocery markets in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

  The value of a sugar beet is in its extractable sugar, and Tokariuk said the price per metric ton is $66.30 based upon 17.3 per cent extraction rate. In the sugar beet business, extraction rate is everything, and as plant science marches on, the beets continue to improve in quality.

  “Our hope is eventually that we can have some upgrades in the plant and that we can increase the amount of sugar we produce here,” Tokariuk said.