Our three pillars of sustainability

A responsible business rooted in food and agriculture

Our business is founded in the world of food and agriculture, and our operating model depends upon sustainable agricultural and rural economies within the sugar supply chain.

ACCREDITATIONS

Sustainable agriculture is extremely important to us, our growers and our customers. Alongside our industry partners, we work hard across our supply chain to reduce our impact on the environment. We are fully assured by the world-leading food chain assurance scheme Red Tractor, and achieve high standards on sustainability across our value chain with our growers.

Authorisation from certifying bodies is required before beet can be accepted into our factories and we have robust processes in place alongside auditing to ensure standards are maintained. Growers are audited yearly, and the audits are registered with Red Tractor as the standard holder, who in turn inform us of the grower’s status.

We are also proud to be founding members of SAI Platform’s Regenerative Agriculture Programme - a collaborative and farmer-centred initiative that aims to address the urgent need for an aligned industry recognised, trusted and cost-effective way to assess, measure and report regenerative agriculture outcomes on farms worldwide. You can read more about our past work with SAI Platform here.

Additionally, as a Sedex member we are committed to sourcing responsibly and having an ethical and sustainable supply chain. Using Sedex tools and services helps us improve our responsible business practices.

OUR THREE PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY

For British Sugar, sustainability is economic, social and environmental. These three pillars set out the areas where our knowledge and resources are enabling us to make a positive change.

They represent the issues that matter most to us, to our stakeholders and to the communities where we operate. Together, these three pillars give structure, direction and unity to all our sustainability efforts.

We are focusing on playing our part in meeting our 2030 sustainability commitments, through reducing our end-to-end supply chain water and CO2 footprints by 30%, ensuring all our plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, biodegradable or compostable and providing access to objective scientific advice on sugar, the diet and health to over 25 million people around the world.