British Sugar

But first, what exactly is sugar?

Hello, my name's Perry Bateman and I'm Head of Science at British Sugar.

All sugar starts with sunshine and fresh air.

Plants capture carbon dioxide from the air.

They usually form rings when they're in water so they're a type of carbohydrate and that simply means that hydrated carbon and just the arrangement of those atoms the carbon the hydrogen and the oxygen dictates what kind of sugar you end up with that's the basic premise of it that creates the monosaccharide monosaccharides are the the building blocks of sugar they're the fundamental monomer if you like which is the arrangement of carbon hydrogen and oxygen usually in a ring shape And there are different types of those monosaccharides, so glucose, fructose, for example.

And those can be joined together to make other molecules, which are the more complex sugars.

Perry Bateman at British Sugar.

Now we know what sugar is, we're going to explore its impacts on our teeth.

Bury St Edmund's sugar beet factory is processing once again with the latest campaign now underway.

British Sugar launched its 26-27 campaign on September the 9th, 29th in Wissington with the Bury and Newark factories following shortly after on October the 6th.

The later season has begun well with good throughputs.

Dan Green, the firm's agricultural director, said British Sugar was looking forward to the upcoming campaign, which expects to be relatively short compared to previous years.

It's no secret that the droughts this summer have been challenging for UK growers, but sugar beet is an extremely resilient crop, with deep roots meaning it can still access water during periods of dry and hot weather.

As such, we expect this year's crop to be variable, with yields reflecting the challenging growing conditions across the region.

But we remain confident in the resilience of sugar beet and the crop is coming out of the ground well with better than expected sugar contents so far.

Mr Green added the firm will continue to work with growers to monitor crop health.

And, uh, visiting in that episode from memory, Peter Hepworth, who was, uh, well, shall we describe him as an enthusiastic user of, uh, agrichemicals, and you can find that episode on YouTube.

Louise, some news, uh, sugar beet growers have been waiting for, for some time, a deal on the 2027/28 beet price with British Sugar.

Yeah.

At long last.

That was Sandy Douglas there with Nancy Nicholson in Caithness.

After months of negotiations, British Sugar and the National Farmers Union have agreed a price for sugar beet farmers for 2027-28.

It's lower than last year, with a one-year contract paying £28.50 a ton for up to half of the contract tonnage.

This compares with £30 a ton for up to 65% on the current crop, and that's lower than the year before.

So the price is falling.

Sugar beet is grown mainly in Eastern England, and all the crop is processed by British Sugar.

It's sold under the brand Silver Spoon.

The crop is planted in the spring and harvested between October and February.