Eastern Sugar, Inc. is was the only Czech sugar production company that as a part of the EU reform of Common Market Organization for sugar closed its three sugar factories and returned the sugar production quota to 102,473,000 tons (i.e. 22.53 % of the quota for the Czech Republic before the reform). The total area where sugar beet had been grown thus shrank by 11,600 ha. On the other hand, the other sugar producers bought the whole remaining quota of 20,070 tons. Before the restructuring process started, the Czech Republic had had the sugar production quota of 454,862 tons, after the EU reform of Common Market Organization for sugar, it has been 372,459 tons of sugar. The process of restructuring was a great economic burden for the sugar producers in the Czech Republic: during the process they paid to the EU restructuring fund C 167 million. The amount of sugar and sugar beet produced in the Czech Republic is, however, still one of the largest in the EU. The cutting of quotas in the Czech Republic was not done because of the ineffectiveness of production: concerning sugar production, the country is not only self-sufficient, it is also possessing the capacities to export it. The main factors that make this possible are achieved hectare yields of sugar beet, comparative production cost and high quality of produced sugar. The Czech Republic achieves results comparable with other EU producers even in the distillery sector. The country is self-sufficient in the production of drinking alcohol, and in the production of renewable energy resources - absolute alcohol, E85 and E95 - also keeps pace with the leading EU producers.
