Consuming resources
responsibly

10 December 2024

Decarbonising our operations

At British Sugar, we care about our impact on the world around us. We have worked hard over many years to improve energy efficiency in our factories, and more recently have utilised our engineering expertise to undertake a series of step-change investments to further decarbonise our operations.

Here’s an overview of what we’ve been up to and the plans we have for our four factories:

• At our Wissington factory in Norfolk, we designed and installed a major, multi-million-pound energy reduction project which involved installing a new evaporator, heat exchanges and processing equipment. The project has reduced site emissions by 30,000 tonnes of carbon a year. The project was commissioned and operating for the start of the 2023/24 sugar beet campaign and reduced the site’s sugar production steam demand by 25% in its first year alone. We have also upgraded the sugar beet pulp press station at Wissington 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, thus reducing the energy required to dry it in the animal feed drying operations. These upgrades have resulted in a reduction in gas usage on-site, and a C0₂e emission reduction of 5,000 tonnes per annum. Our engineers are now looking at how they can reduce emissions further by reducing steam output.
• At Bury St Edmunds, we are in the midst of a multi-million-pound investment, replicating the Wissington energy reduction project. Construction is underway and this project will help to reduce site emissions by around 20,000 tonnes of carbon a year. We have also invested in decarbonising animal feed production on site, through improved mechanical pressing performance of the sugar beet pulp material and pre-heating of the dryer air using waste heat from our on-site Combined Heat and Power plant. This will reduce emissions by around 6,000 tonnes of carbon per year.
• At our Newark site, we have installed new heaters, which are used to heat the raw juice in the sugar production process, reducing the site’s annual fuel consumption by more than 19,000 MWh and reducing annual carbon emissions by more than 3,500 tonnes per annum.
• Finally, at Cantley, we are currently installing a new, modular gas-fired Combined Heat and Power plant on site, which will reduce carbon emissions by around 16,000 tonnes per year. The plant will also be set up for fuel flexibility as it can be fuelled by hydrogen too. Installation is underway and we expect it to be commissioned ready for the start of the 2025/26 campaign. We are also trialling work to reduce lime usage in the sugar production process at Cantley, which will bring energy and carbon reduction benefits.

As a business, we remain focused on using innovation and world-class engineering capabilities to drive efficiencies within our operations and work closely with our customers to reduce carbon emissions across our UK sugar supply chain.

Our recent investments have delivered a 21% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions against our baseline year of 2017/18.

As technology moves forward and develops, we will continue to consider all possible options to drive further decarbonisation across all our sites.