British Sugar factory breaks record in milestone campaign

British Sugar bosses said farmers' beet deliveries have been fuelling "strong performances" at its four factories in East Anglia - one of which broke a processing record last week.

The Bury St Edmunds site in Suffolk achieved its best-ever weekly average slice rate of 15,894 tonnes per day.

Other factories at Wissington in west Norfolk, Cantley in the Broads, and Newark in Nottinghamshire are also steaming ahead, having already processed a total of 2.5m tonnes of sugar beet - about 30pc of the expected total for the 2024/25 campaign. 

Dan Green, agriculture director for British Sugar (Image: British Sugar) British Sugar's agriculture director Dan Green said although wet weather had hampered the start of the beet harvest in September, some "ideal lifting conditions" in the last six weeks had sped up deliveries into the factories.

"I am feeling really positive," he said. "We have seen some cracking performances from the factories over recent weeks, and I am excited to see that continue into the new year.

"We were a little short of beet early in the campaign, but now harvesting has been going really well and all the factories are performing nicely. Beet is flowing in really well and we are slicing it really well, which is what everyone wants.

"Sugar content has crept up to around 17pc over the last few weeks. That is good, growers are happy with that.

"Yields are quite varied, but we have heard of people lifting some really good crops and yields getting towards the 100t/ha mark, so there are some good crops out there."

The 2024/25 sugar beet harvest is progressing well, says British Sugar (Image: British Sugar) The factories at Bury St Edmunds and Wissington are both celebrating their 100th campaign this year.

But neither are resting on their laurels, with significant investments under way at both to improve their energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

Further to a £17m investment in a new evaporator commissioned at Wissington last autumn, planning permission is now being sought for a major new drier at the factory.

If approved, it is expected to be built for the 2026/27 campaign at a cost of £30m-£40m, reducing annual carbon emissions by 50,000 tonnes, said Mr Green.

"Like a lot of businesses, we have a plan to decarbonise and part of that plan at Wissington is to invest in the drying facility - the part of the factory that takes the pulp once the sugar is extracted from it, and turns it into a dried animal feed product," he said. 

"At the moment we have three gas driers and this will convert them to steam driers, so it is an investment that will take steam from our combined heat and power plant and use it to dry pulp indirectly."

Another project at Bury will see almost £20m spent on new evaporators ready for next campaign, and British Sugar is also investing £11m in a combined heat and power plant at Cantley.

New evaporators were installed last year at the British Sugar factory at Wissington, in west Norfolk (Image: British Sugar)