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Changes to 2022/23 Campaign at Cantley Factory

10 May 2022

British Sugar, Cantley

Attributable to Paul Kenward, Managing Director, British Sugar

As part of its commitment to a thriving homegrown sugar industry, British Sugar is committed to lean operations and our ambitious climate change plans. At our Cantley site we will be implementing a few changes this year to support these ambitions.

In order to reflect fluctuating sugar beet production, we will be optimising the flow of beet between our four factories, as we do every year. We need to minimise the distance beet travels, and ensure our factories are kept fully supplied, so we can continue to meet our customer requirements. For the 2022/23 campaign, this will mean that Cantley will materially reduce the amount of sugar beet it processes on a daily basis.

In addition, to reduce carbon emissions, Cantley will stop drying beet pulp (the fibre left after most of the sugar has been extracted) for animal feed. We can then permanently turn off our coal dryer, and save approximately 25,000 tonnes of CO2e emissions at Cantley. We will move the pulp to Bury instead, where it can be dried with cleaner fuels, or fermented in our Anaerobic Digestion plant into green biogas.

These changes will result in the number of roles required at the Cantley site reducing by about 10%. The 9 people affected by this role reduction have been consulted today; we will help them find opportunities at other British Sugar sites, or wider opportunities within ABF.

Cantley is very much an integral part of our four site strategy. We fully intend to continue to optimise our significant and strategically important operations there. The site will be used to test and trial different initiatives, intended to help us secure the long term future of the industry. This year, among many other investments, we will invest £1.25m in automation and a private 4G Network at the site.

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British Sugar is the sole processor of the UK’s sugar beet crop, working in partnership with around 3,000 growers and our customers to deliver a world-class product. We process around eight million tonnes of sugar beet and produce up to 1.2 million tonnes of sugar annually.