Sugar Beet (Hansard, 19 January 2004)

§ Alun Michael

It is not possible to give an estimate of the percentage of the annual sugar consumption in the UK which is met by domestic sugar beet production. This is due to several reasons. Firstly, it is not possible to distinguish between exports of sugar produced from imported sugar cane and exports of sugar produced from domestic sugar beet. Secondly, not all sugar is consumed directly, it is also manufactured into many processed products. Although those processed products may be produced in the UK, they may not be consumed here.

However, the Department produces data on the annual total production of sugar (on a refined basis) from domestic sugar beet and supplies for the UK market. These figures are published annually in "Agriculture in the United Kingdom". Copies are available in the House Library or on the Defra website at www.defra.gov.uk/esg. The latest figures available are for 2002 and are provisional. A total of 1,390,000 tonnes of sugar were produced from sugar beet in 2002. The UK imported 1,309,000 tonnes of sugar and exported 487,000 tonnes of sugar. Thus, the total new supply of sugar available for use in the UK in 2002 was 2,212,000 tonnes (see Table 1 as follows). UK production as a percentage of new supply, which is the commonly used measure of self sufficiency, was 63 per cent. in 2002.

Table 1. Sugar production in the UK in 2002¹
Calendar year 2002 (provisional)	Sugar(thousand tonnes refined basis)
Production²	1,390
Imports from:
the EU	186
the rest of the world	1,123
Exports to:
the EU	104
the rest of the world	383
Total new supply	2,212
Production as percentage of total new supply for use in the UK	63
¹Extracted from "Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2002"
²Sugar coming out of the factory in the early part of the new year is regarded as being of the previous calendar year's production.