Consuming resources responsibly

Climate change is impacting us all, and we recognise the crucial role we play in creating a sustainable sugar industry and helping the UK Government meet its net zero targets.

As a supplier of world-class products to our customers and consumers around the world, we are conscious of the need to continue to deliver safe and high-quality products whilst minimising our impact on the world around us.

That’s why at British Sugar, we have always looked for innovative solutions and opportunities to reduce our impact.

We work closely with our growers to improve performance on farm by reducing inputs, at our factories we transform outputs from the sugar production process into valuable inputs for agriculture and other industries; and we work shoulder-to-shoulder with industry partners and customers to make improvements beyond our manufacturing base.

Our progress to date...

Since our baseline year of 2018, we have invested around £360 million to make our factories even more efficient, of which £140m has been invested directly in 52 energy and carbon reduction projects. This has resulted in a reduction of Scope 1 and 2 market-based emissions by 31%, as well as a reduction in energy and water usage.

*All statistics updated January 2026

Invested around

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in our factories, with
£140 million invested directly
into 52 carbon reduction projects

Scope 1 and 2 market-based

emissions reduced by

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reduction

in energy used

(excluding energy exported)

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reduction

in water abstracted

(including municipal)

Key areas of focus...

Greenhouse gas emissions

Water

Waste

Plastics

Greenhouse gas emissions

We have a continuous improvement programme to reduce emissions from the products we sell.

As a business, and part of ABF Sugar, we are committed to SBTi and our business commitment is to deliver a 52% reduction in Scope 1 and 2, 30% scope 3 and 36% FLAG (Forestry Land and Agriculture) by 2030. We also have committed to reach net zero by 2050.

From our baseline year of 2018, we have reduced our Scope 1 and 2 market-based emissions by 31%, but we know there is more to do. In 2023, at our Wissington site, we invested in a significant energy reduction project which has delivered a step-change reduction in onsite energy usage, with site emissions lowered by 30,000 tonnes of carbon a year, and demand for process steam reduced by 25%. We replicated the design principles of this project at our Bury St Edmunds factory in 2024/25, with this project commissioned ready for Autumn 2025, delivering a site reduction of 20,000 tonnes of carbon a year. In addition, we installed a new modular gas-fired combined heat and power plant at our Cantley site, which was commissioned and operational in Autumn 2025 and delivering a site reduction of around 16,000 tonnes of carbon a year. At Wissington, we are also undertaking our largest decarbonisation project to date, a new steam drying plant, and you can read more about it here.

Our roadmap to get us to net zero sets out several key components across our supply chain, including plans to improve energy efficiency, switch to alternative fuels and explore lower emission transport fuels. We have full engagement throughout our business and are confident that we have plans in place to meet our ambition.

Water

Across our factories we have invested in a series of process adaptations, deployed new technologies and used architectural design techniques to reduce water usage.

More than 70% of sugar beet is water so we ensure that our sites make use of all water generated as part of the sugar production process, thereby significantly reducing the amount of water that we need to abstract from natural sources.

All the water that we use in our processes is sent to one of our water treatment plants on site prior to discharge to local waterways. To ensure that we adhere to the latest environmental compliance requirements, we have invested over £20m over the last two years to improve the quality of water discharged from our sites, with new water treatment facilities constructed at Newark and Cantley, as well as upgraded facilities at our Bury St Edmunds site.

These investments have improved the quantity of water we return to local waterways and ensures that we continue to meet discharge water quality requirements.

We have exciting feasibility assessments underway at two of our sites to understand if we can become totally water self-sufficient, almost eliminating the need to abstract water from local sources.

Waste

There is no such thing as waste here at British Sugar. We believe that good recycling segregation and waste management is not only good for our business, but good for the environment around us too. We have recycling centres at our five sites, which encourages the segregation of materials to help reuse and recycle as much as we can.

In addition, as well as producing around 1.2 million tonnes of sugar every year, we also produce a wide range of co-products by turning outputs from the sugar production process into valuable inputs. No part of our sugar beet crop goes to waste.

From animal feed to topsoil and renewable energy – in fact for every one tonne of sugar produced, there is only 200g of waste.

Find out more about our range of co-products here.

Plastics

As a business, we do not use a significant amount of plastic as most of our products are sold in paper bags or delivered to our customers in bulk tankers. However, we recognise that there is always more we can do.

In 2024, our Bury Customer Supply site has undergone a multi-million-pound investment to drive operational efficiencies, but in line with these improvements, we have also been able to reduce our use of paper and plastics by around 50% and completely remove single-use labels.

We continue to look for ways to reduce the use of plastics in our business.

Latest alerts

Stay up to date on our latest sustainability activities and considerations.

Cantley's new CHP plant starts exporting power!

12th August 2025

Exciting times are afoot at our Cantley site, with its new modular, gas-fired Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant exporting power for the first time last week!

This achievement marks a significant milestone in the project following weeks of electrical testing. With more commissioning activities to follow ahead of being fully-functional and integrated into the factory operations ready for the 25/26 campaign. This project will help to reduce Cantley's site emissions by 16,000 tonnes of carbon a year, and is set up for fuel flexibility too.

Wissington steam drying project

22nd July 2025

The foundations are being laid for our biggest decarbonisation project in the company’s history at Wissington sugar factory!

The equipment will be installed and connected to the factory systems over the course of the next year, ready for the start of the 2026/27 sugar beet campaign.

Wissington steam drying

Bury decarbonisation project

22nd July 2025

The project team are gearing up for commissioning ahead of the 2025/26 sugar beet campaign – this project sees the installation of new evaporators which are expected to reduce site emissions by around 20,000 tonnes of carbon a year.

Bury decarbonisation project

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Case studies

More sustainability areas of focus...