The French sugar supply chain is the largest in the European Union: France produces around 4 million tonnes of sugar a year, more than 95% of it from sugar beet grown in mainland France and, for the remainder, from sugarcane in the overseas departments (Réunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique). It stands out through its strongly export-oriented profile (a large share of the sugar leaves the country) and through the diversity of its productions: beyond sugar, beet feeds a significant production of alcohol and ethanol (fuel bioethanol, neutral alcohol for spirits, perfumery and pharmaceuticals), and cane gives rum (sugar-factory rum, from molasses, and agricultural rum, from cane juice). Finally, the chain generates a substantial resource of co-products — beet pulp, molasses, filter cake, vinasse, bagasse — almost entirely recovered in animal feed, fertilisation and energy.
