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About Us
Our Businesses
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We run some of the most sophisticated and efficient production processes in the food industry. But that capability counts for little without a supply of two agricultural crops: sugar beet and sugar cane. And the viability of these crops each year depends in turn on our growers in the UK, Spain and Africa.
As a result we have been focused on nurturing our relationships with growers who equally depend on us to help them manage rising costs, ever-present pest diseases and, increasingly, the impacts of climate change. By working together we can continue to deliver quality assured sugar to customers in the face of commercial and environmental challenges. Our intention is that our partnership with growers should become stronger, closer and as mutually rewarding as ever.
In the UK, British Sugar works with some 3,000 growers and processes some 8 million tonnes of sugar beet a year, playing a key role in many rural communities. We understand the need to partner with British farms and have introduced a range of measures to this end. We already offer an optional 25% cash advance to growers in July and August when many struggle with cash flow, as they have invested in growing their crops but there is still some time to go before their crops can be harvested, which is when they would usually get paid. As part of our new ‘field-to-factory’ programme, we are introducing a new grower contract for the 2023/24 growing season, which includes a substantial price increase on the base price that we pay for beet, a further 25% cash advance to support growers’ cash flow, ‘futureslinked’ variable pricing to give growers some protection against volatile beet pricing, a local premium for growing close to our processing plants to encourage very local production that is better for the environment, and finally a yield guarantee to protect incomes against unexpected beet yield losses. Meanwhile we continue to invest in the development of a long-term solution to virus yellows by supporting government plans for a geneediting framework for plants and crops.
In Spain, Azucarera aims to enhance further our partnership with growers by moving away from a single fixed price for all growers, replacing this formula with contractual agreements negotiated individually with each grower in order to better reflect crop location and yield potential, soil conditions, tools and technologies, and to offer flexible pricing that caters for each grower’s appetite for risk. In this way we agree with each grower the services and inputs required, a minimum income, and a bonus linked to the yield achieved from their crops.
Our partnership approach will help offset rising farm costs and encourage growers to choose our crops rather than competing crops. In the last year alone this flexible approach has led to an increase in growing area of some 10%. Looking ahead, our ability to tailor our agreements to suit growers’ needs should make us more competitive than other agri-food businesses unable to adapt their offer to farmers in a similar way.
In Africa, we have started building a new sugar plant in the Kilombero Valley in Tanzania. This investment will double sugar production and will not only benefit our existing 8,800 growers but also provide an opportunity for some 3,000 new growers. We continue to invest in upskilling and developing farming practices for growers by offering training on various agricultural topics including agronomy practices, pest control, seed cane varieties and sustainable harvesting methods such as green cane harvesting.
To provide direct support to growers we have expanded our grower support team to radically improve cane productivity from a baseline of 41 tonnes per hectare to 65 tonnes per hectare, which will improve grower profits.
We are securing a long-term partnership with our growers in all three regions by sharing risk and reward with them, by being flexible and supportive in challenging times, and by engaging in open and constructive discussion to tackle the issues we jointly face.