Other refiners the real enemy
He told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food that some of Irish Sugar's competitors want to concentrate processing in just four or five member states, with very large-scale production and lower raw material costs.
They expect to compensate for lower sugar prices by dominating the entire EU industry, said Mr Dilger. "They do not say it, but they want to see sugar production wiped out in 15 to 20 European countries".
Mr Dilger said they have already destroyed the Italian industry, by exporting a vast quantity 1.3m tonnes of sugar into Italy, because of the perceived weakness of the industry in that country.
He said there are similar trends in Spain and Portugal, whose industries are also perceived to be weak.
In Ireland, imports of sugar have grown from 5,000 to 40,000 tonnes. In the past six months, almost every industrial customer of Greencore's business was approached by competitors to take very price-competitive imported sugar. "Part of the sales pitch is of course that sugar production will not survive in Ireland following reform in 2006", he said.
He insisted that Irish Sugar's decision to invest in creating cost-efficient, world class manufacturing in Mallow, which can compete with the best survivors of sugar regime reform, was correct.
While waiting for reform to become clearer, Irish Sugar would have lost further market share, he said.
"By the time a decision was made on what kind of production structure was needed in this country, it would not have been needed, because there would only be enough sugar sales to fill one factory", he said.
He said Irish Sugar decided to put a clear line in the sand and say that the Irish industry is here for the long term, and competitors had better look elsewhere to pick up market share.
