Supplementary memorandum submitted by
British Sugar
EMPLOYMENT GENERATED BY THE UK BEET SUGAR
INDUSTRY
The UK beet sugar industry is a complex and
integrated industry which is primarily located in the rural arable
areas of England (ie from North Yorkshire to Essex in Eastern
England, as well as from Lancashire to Oxfordshire in the west).
The industry generates employment both directly
and indirectly through the many activities associated with it
(eg haulage, raw materials supply, seed trade, agricultural supply
trades, power generation, horticulture, retailing, design and
process engineering etc).
The most authoritative independent work examining
the economic and employment significance of the industry was carried
out in 1994 by the University of Reading. Their report "The
Economic Impact of the British Beet Sugar Industry"[11]evaluates
these effects in detail, including the employment linkages throughout
the UK economy.
The report concludes that "approximately
23,000 jobs are generated directly and indirectly by the existence
of beet sugar production and processing in the UK". Economic
multipliers of between 1.7 and 5.5 for different components of
the industry are used to arrive at this conclusion.
It also states that: ". . . the British
beet sugar industry has an economic significance that stretches
well beyond the first impressions of farming and factory processing.
In many regards it is an integral and important part of economic
activity in the food industry, and policy makers should recognise
the knock-on effects that may be generated as a result of their
decisions on farm policy for sugar production".
Since the report was released, three small factories
have been closed with the loss of about 100 direct jobs and 1,000
growers have stopped growing the crop. However, the overall scale
of the industry (measured in terms of sugar and co-product output
and power generation) has actually increased over this same period
of time.
17 May 2004
11 The Economic Impact of the British Beet Sugar Industry,
by Professor The Lord Peston (Emeritus Professor of Economics
at Queen Mary College, London) Dr David Hallam (Senior Economics
lecturer at the University of Reading) and Dr Peter Midmore (Lecturer
in Economics at the University of Wales), November 1994. Back
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