UK sugar output at risk as freezing fog blights harvest

BRITAIN risks having to import more sugar from overseas after the recent cold snap devastated beet crops.

British Sugar – the supplier of more than half of the sugar consumed in the UK – said this year’s harvest was set to be 28pc below 2022 levels after the recent frost killed many of its plants.

All of the company’s sugar comes from sugar beet grown in the UK but crops have been hit by plunging temperatures. This month’s cold snap has seen temperatures drop as low as minus 10 in England.

British Sugar’s beet is grown in East Anglia and the East Midlands, where dense freezing fog has been forming in recent days

“This is a root vegetable, and when the frost gets into the beet as it has this year, it kills the cell structure and you can’t really process it,” said John Bason, the finance director of British Sugar’s parent company Associated British Foods.

The result is what Mr Bason said is likely to be the smallest sugar crop he has ever seen. British Sugar expects to produce 740,000 tons of sugar in the UK this season, below earlier forecasts and down from 1.03m tons last year.

The company mainly supplies food producers with ingredients for cakes or biscuits, although it also makes sugar which is sold on supermarket shelves. The poor harvest could force it to import more sugar from overseas.

“We’ve got to make sure that we can maintain those supplies, given the shortage of sugar from sugar beet,” Mr Bason said. “I think we just need to determine our options. But we are professional and we will work to be able to [fulfill all orders]”.

It comes after years of warnings from sugar beet farmers that growing uncertainty over yields was driving people out of the industry.

The National Farmers’ Union has previously argued that the exodus meant that “the home-grown sugar industry” would eventually become “unviable”.

This week, ministers announced an emergency authorisation of a pesticide to help stop the spread of yellow viruses, plaguing growers for years.

Mr Bason said British Sugar’s profits would be lower this year as a result of the disruption to its crops but stressed it was likely to be “a one-off effect”.

The warning came in a trading update from ABF, which also owns Primark. ABF said its fashion business recorded record sales in the run-up to Christmas, buoyed by demand for warm clothes. Sales of heels and false lashes also rebounded as people flocked back to parties and offices.