[2] As plant breeding resulted in steadily smaller beet with a higher sugar content, this went against the interests of the farmers.

The Eerste Nederlandsche Coöperatieve Beetwortelsuikerfabriek in Sas van Gent opened in 1900.

In 1919 most of the non-cooperative sugar industry merged to found Centrale Suiker Maatschappij (CSM).

In July 1928 the Coöperatieve Suikerfabriek Zevenbergen and the Dinteloord Sugar Factory entered into a partnership.

[5] In 1930 the Zeeland Sugar Factory in Bergen op Zoom was bought by competitor CSM and closed down.

Even in the Netherlands, with its fine-grained water transport network, this put a practical limit on the size of sugar factories.

[8] As road networks improved, it was no longer necessary to be close to the sugar beet farms, and it became more rational to work with a few larger factories.

[11] After that, the remaining factories were: In 2006 competitor CSM announced that it would sell its sugar division to Cosun, the company that owned Suiker Unie.

At that time, this had 11,500 farmers growing sugar beet, and a market share of 5% in Europe.

It led Corbion to immediately close the Friesch-Groningsche Coöperatieve Beetwortelsuikerfabriek in Groningen city.

Byproducts are: Cosun Beet Company has the trade mark Van Gilse for selling to Dutch consumers.

This way, the beet had more time to grow before they were harvested and Cosun still meet its obligations to deliver white sugar.

The strong production growth in 2007 was due to the acquisition of CSM from Corbion.

[19] To make matters worse, the world sugar price hit a 10-year low in 2018.