The Austrian sugar and fruit processing company Agrana, which has been listed on the Viennese stock exchange, will – in the course of a thorough restructuring – close down two of its 11 sugar factories, one in Hohenau in the province of Lower Austria (Land Niederösterreich) and one in Rimavská Sobota in Slovakia. 136 and 123 employees, respectively, stand to lose their jobs. In order to mitigate the consequences of the planned redundancies, social plans will be drawn up. According to the company’s supervisory board, continuously declining sugar prices and sizeable payments to the EU restructuring fund will greatly intensify pressures on the whole industry to reduce costs. Far-reaching rationalisation and concentration are therefore unavoidable for the industry in general and for the company in particular, the supervisory board stated. Both plants concerned have been processing beet during each year’s campaign.