Starch producers forced to adapt after poor French wheat harvest

PARIS, Sept 26 (Reuters) - A sharp drop in the quality of France’s wheat crop due to excessive rainfall will lead to additional costs for starch producers as the industry continues to struggle with low demand and growing competition from imports, they said on Thursday. Starch and its derivatives, made from wheat, corn, potatoes and tapioca, are used in products ranging from ice cream to cosmetics, paints, pills and cardboard because of their sweetening, thickening and texturizing properties. France’s soft wheat harvest, expected to be the smallest in 40 years due to excessive rainfall, has also suffered from poor quality levels, including very low and heterogeneous specific gravity, a measure of grain size. “The smaller grains will pose challenges at the industrial level in our plants that will not be easy to solve,” Marie-Laure Empinet, head of French starch producer group USIPA, told the lobby’s general meeting. Small grains have less starch and more cellulose, which is harsher ...