British Sugar plc is a subsidiary of Associated British Foods and the sole British producer of sugar from sugar beet, as well as medicinal cannabis. British Sugar processes all sugar beet grown in the United Kingdom, and produces about two-thirds of the United Kingdom's quota of sugar, with the remainder covered by Tate & Lyle and imports. British Sugar and the growers fix a contract called the "Inter Professional Agreement" determining the price paid for beet grown and the allocation of growers' quotas. The National Farmers Union is the negotiator for the growers.
History
Early history
The company was formed as the British Sugar Corporation in 1936, when the British parliamentnationalised the entire sugar beet crop processing industry, under the banner of British Sugar Corporation. At this time, there were 13 separate companies with 18 factories across the country. In 1972, it began selling its sugar products under the name of Silver Spoon. In 1977, a rights issue decreased the government holding from 36% to 24%. In May 1982, the company name was shortened to British Sugar plc, and later that year it was taken over by Berisford International. After a crash in property values affected Berisford, it was sold to Associated British Foods on 2 January 1991.
Closures
In 1981, the Ely, Felsted, Nottingham and Selby factories closed after a reduction in the allowed sugar quota. This was followed by the closure of sites at Spalding in 1989, Peterborough and Brigg in 1991, King's Lynn in 1994, Bardney and Ipswich in 2001, Kidderminster in 2002, and Allscott and York in 2007. The site at Allscott, which opened in 1927, near Telford, Shropshire, was closed because it "lacked scale" to be run economically, while the site at York, North Yorkshire, was closed due to the poor crop yields in northern England. Of the 18 factories which were owned by the British Sugar Corporation, only four still process beet - Bury St Edmunds, Cantley, Newark-on-Trent and Wissington. The Bury site is also a major packaging plant for Silver Spoon. The 12 sites already closed have been sold and decommissioned to various degrees - many large concrete silos still remain even where the sites have been closed, including those at the Kidderminster factory which was closed in 2002 and sold off in 2006. The concrete silos at the Ipswich site were demolished in 2018, 17 years after the site closed. Allscott has now been completely demolished. Spalding has been replaced by Spalding power station. BP and DuPont are working with British Sugar to build a bioethanol plant at BP's Hull site, as described in an announcement made on June 2007.
Operations
British Sugar is effectively the sole buyer of all of the sugar beet grown in Britain. This output comes from around 3,500 farmers throughout Britain. British Sugar is a supplier of cannabis to GW Pharmaceuticals.
