Sugar beet growers celebrate record yield of 83.4t per hectare of beet

Sugar beet growers are celebrating record yields from the crop, with the final average yield for 2017/18 an impressive 83.4 tonnes per hectare of beet.

The 2017/18 sugar beet campaign came to a close just before Easter and the British beet sugar industry is celebrating its record yields.

8.9m tonnes of sugar beet were processed through British Sugar’s four factories with the final average yield 83.4 tonnes per hectare of beet. This compares to a previous record of 79.8.

The increases have been driven through the work of the British Beet Research Organisation (BBRO) – jointly funded by British Sugar and sugar beet growers – which has played a role in driving productivity.

The result has been an increase in yields of 25% in the last ten years and this year many growers have seen yields of over 100 tonnes per hectare.

Paul Kenward, Managing Director of British Sugar said it has been a "long and challenging" campaign for growers.

“I am hugely proud of the record yields we’ve seen from our homegrown sugar beet and we continue to be one of the most efficient sugar industries in the world,” Mr Kenward said.

“However, we simply couldn’t do it without our 3,500 growers and the 9,500 people who work across our supply chain.

“We are processing the same amount of sugar beet today with four factories as we were 20 years ago with ten, as a result of investing in our factories to make them even more efficient. We’ll now focus on getting ready for the next campaign and making further improvements.”

The total sugar produced by British Sugar for the 2017/18 campaign was approximately 1.38 million tonnes from a total growing area of over 105,000 hectares.

British Sugar is the sole processor of the UK’s sugar beet crop, and supplies around 50 per cent of the UK’s demand for sugar.