Pulp processing improvement programme at British Sugar

At British Sugar, one of the most valuable co-products we produce is animal feed. We make and sell over 500,000 tonnes of feed a year from sugar beet pulp, the fibrous material left over from the sugar-making process.

To produce the feed, the wet pulp needs to be dried. The first step of this process involves mechanically squeezing the pulp to remove as much residual water as possible, before drying it at a high temperature in rotating drums which uses a lot of energy. We have therefore been working to find ways to increase the efficiency of this mechanical squeezing process. 

This has included an investment programme to transform our systems, increasing profitability and reducing energy costs across our UK sites.

In September 2022, we upgraded the sugar beet pulp press station at our Wissington factory to include a new, larger, self-draining press as well as making improvements across three other pulp presses. These improvements increased the quantity of water squeezed from the pulp, reducing the energy required to dry it.