HAMBURG, Jan 26, 2026, 12:59 (CET)
- fritz-kola said it does not plan to raise prices as it shifts part of its sugar supply to regenerative farming, after a pilot cut emissions by 1,534 tonnes of CO2, a participating farmer said.
- Chief executive Mirco Wolf Wiegert said climate measures were already built into pricing, despite higher costs for growers switching methods.
- In separate coverage, WirtschaftsWoche said Germany’s FritzBox router champion is under pressure to adapt as the market moves from DSL to fibre.
Hamburg-based soft drinks maker fritz-kola said it does not expect its drinks to get more expensive after a pilot project that moved sugar beet farming to “regenerative” methods and delivered its first harvest results. One participating farmer said the six farms produced 1,449 tonnes of sugar and cut emissions by 1,534 tonnes of CO2. (TAG24)
The question of price has become a blunt test for brands trying to sell climate action in a market that still flinches at higher shelf tags. For beverages, sugar sits right in the middle: it is a core input, and farming emissions are hard to avoid.
Regenerative agriculture is a loose bundle of practices meant to rebuild soils — less ploughing, more plant cover, more biodiversity — and, in theory, store more carbon in the ground. Companies like to talk about it as “insetting”, meaning cutting emissions inside their own supply chain rather than buying offsets.
fritz-kola linked the move to feedback from its own community and said it partnered with Klim, a start-up founded in 2019, and six farmers across Thuringia, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony to change how sugar beets are grown. CEO Mirco Wolf Wiegert said the company had been funding climate projects “since day one” and that “such measures are already factored into our prices.”
Grower Cay Hüneke, who manages Rittergut Schlüsselburg in North Rhine-Westphalia, said the switch meant less soil disturbance and a heavier focus on cover crops and undersowing — planting additional crops to protect soil and keep roots in the ground longer. He said the changes had already improved CO2 storage and biodiversity.
“Across all participating farms we harvested 1,449 tonnes of sugar, saving 1,534 tonnes of CO2,” Hüneke said, describing the first year’s results. He pointed to practical gains too: mulch cover that lowered soil warming in midsummer and cut evaporation, and better water absorption during heavy rain.
Hüneke acknowledged extra costs but pushed back on the simple narrative. “Calling it just more expensive farming would be wrong,” he said, arguing the methods could also lift productivity and resilience over time.
Wiegert called the pilot a “full success” and said the point was to show a model for climate action with “real impact”, framing it as an alternative to relying on trading in CO2 certificates — tradable credits used to offset emissions rather than cut them at source.
Still, the downside case is easy to sketch. Regenerative methods can take years to stabilise yields, measurement of carbon savings remains contested, and scaling beyond a pilot can collide with tight farm economics and volatile weather. If yields slip or verification costs rise, the price promise becomes harder to defend.
In separate coverage, WirtschaftsWoche said FritzBox routers — which rose with Germany’s DSL boom in the 2000s — now face a more delicate transition as broadband shifts to fibre connections. (Wiwo)
The Berlin-based company behind FritzBox, AVM, brought in Jan Oetjen as chief executive and Jan-Christian Werner as finance chief as part of a generational transition that included Imker Capital Partners as a new investor, the company said in a previous statement. AVM said it made 580 million euros ($) in revenue in 2023 and employed 890 people. (Fritz)
The firm has been pushing fibre hardware, including the FRITZ!Box 5690, which it billed as a fibre router supporting Wi‑Fi 7 — the latest wireless standard — and common fibre network formats such as GPON and AON. The company set a recommended retail price of 319 euros for the device. (Fritz)
In a December interview with COMPUTER BILD, Oetjen said the product line had expanded from “one box for DSL” into a portfolio spanning cable, mobile and multiple fibre variants, and claimed the group had shipped more new products in the past year than in earlier years. He also said “Fritz” brand awareness in Germany far outweighed “AVM”, and put the company’s domestic market share at around 50%. (Computerbild)
