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SOCIAL: THRIVING AND HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

14 December 2024

British Sugar at the heart of the communities where it operates

With our British Sugar sites being part of the East of England and the East Midlands landscape for over, in some cases, a hundred years we are an established manufacturing business with deep agricultural roots.

Building and maintaining positive relationships with our local communities has always been something we’re proud of and today we consider them to be a key part of who we are. Whether it's fundraising, volunteering time or helping through the use of our skills we want to be able to support the people who work for us, and the communities that we operate in, in whatever way we can.

Our teams are passionate about giving back and as such, we’ve come up with a bit of a different approach to allow us to create as much value as we can from our activities.

This approach consists predominantly of three areas:

Neighbourhood Support

A lot of companies have sponsorship arrangements with some of the larger charities but here at British Sugar we’ve adopted a different approach. We prefer to work with our people to support the local charities and community groups they’re involved with either directly or indirectly through family and friends.

Each of our sites has their own annual ‘pot’. The local teams then decide how this money is spent, enabling funds to stretch further and the people we help more far reaching.

Money Match

Another aspect of this scheme is aimed at a more individual level and recognises that our people are passionate about the causes they support themselves and do a lot of great fundraising for more national charities. To support, we match fund up to £250 on any money raised by the people who work for us. Both teams and individuals are eligible for this funding.

Community volunteering

As a business, we offer employees a day’s paid leave every year to volunteer for a cause close to their heart, and we also encourage team building volunteering initiatives too. Enabling teams the chance to make a difference locally, whilst getting to know each other outside of the office/factory environment.

Over the past 12 months, our teams have spent time:

• Designing, building and driving a miniature sugar tanker at a soap box derby, raising funds for a local homelessness charity.

• Volunteering for a range of local charities including Peterborough Food Bank, the YMCA, rough sleeper outreach, the Salvation Army, Women’s Aid, Sacrewell Farm Trust.
• Created outdoor sensory facilities at a local academy in the Wissington area. This was a four-day commitment and included a team of 13 of our people building, repairing older areas, constructing new areas installing safer facilities. This was a true team effort with the Wissington factory canteen donating food and drink for the ‘workers’ and local contractors donating materials.

And that’s not all – we’re always up for something different.

From providing supplies to food banks or renovating a primary school playground, our teams take huge pride in supporting the local communities around each factory or site. Offering up time, provisions or advice, our teams go beyond simply monetary support.

Some examples over the last 12 months include:

• Supporting a local homelessness charity with its business plan for the coming year

• Donating topsoil to a local school in their bid to plant 1,000 trees

• Hosting community family fun days on site

• Donated sugar as part of a project by FareShare to produce 10 million biscuits to be distributed to more than 2,000 charities

Our impact

Over the past five years, we have given around £150,000 to local community groups and projects, charities, schools, sporting teams and other great causes across East Anglia and the East Midlands and through our volunteering days we have helped transform spaces for countless more.