Sugar beet off to a good start following dry spring and summer
10th October 2025
As the British Sugar factories open for the season, we visited the Bury St Edmunds site to find out what yields and quality are like so far.
Colder weather in January and February, followed by an absence of rainfall has reaped positive results for sugar beet this season, with good yields and sugar content so far, and low pest and disease pressure.
This is according to British Sugar’s head of supply chain – agriculture, Nick Morris.
Speaking at the Bury site a week after it opened, he said the crop was largely drilled by the end of March.
“We had a really good drilling season – the crop was drilled far earlier than it was in the previous two years. Clearly that’s quite a critical part of the growing process: getting the crop not just sown, but sown well.
“The seed went into good seedbed conditions and, for the first time that I can recall, it was a completely unbroken drilling window for most people. There wasn’t a big rain event in the middle of that drilling season.”
With the government taking the decision not to allow the emergency authorisation for Cruiser SB this year or going forward, it was fortunate that there was little virus yellows in this year’s crop – as colder weather and frosts in January and February kept aphids at bay.
Mr Morris noted that beet is incredibly resilient to drought and often some of the better years can be correlated with some of the driest years.
While it’s too early to speak with certainty just yet, the season is off to a good start and we’re seeing some very promising yields.
Around 350 growers have now started their campaign and delivered beet to British Sugar which is fairly typical for this point in the season.
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Sugar content is also looking very positive. “It’s the best start we’ve had in terms of sugar beet quality for quite some time. The average sugar content to date is 17.7%.
That’s an average derived from over half a million tonnes of beet that’s been delivered which is a fairly significant number to draw an average from.
“Obviously there’s large parts of Cantley that haven’t started their campaign yet – some Cantley growers will have been harvesting and delivering to Wissington, so we have seen some Cantley beet but really the north east.”
The Wissington factory opened first on 15th September, followed by Bury and Newark on 29th September. Cantley is due to open on 14th October.
Read more sugar beet news.
