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UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement

29 June 2021

British Sugar supports free and fair trade. Provided that Australian markets are open to homegrown British beet sugar, we remain comfortable competing with sugar from Australia, which is not subsidised.

We do, however, continue to have strong reservations about the Autonomous Tariff Quota (ATQ) for raw cane sugar, which was effectively awarded as a specific subsidy to the sole UK company able to take advantage of it, and forces British sugar beet growers to compete against heavily subsidised sugar from Brazil and elsewhere.

Unless and until the ATQ is completely removed we will be asking government to reduce the level of the ATQ by an equivalent amount to new access granted under Free Trade Agreements.