Europe's beet growing industry has long been attacked by developing nations for putting up trade barriers against cheap cane sugar imports.

The flagship factory for British Sugar at Wissington in Norfolk is now leading the way in efforts to churn out ever more white sugar at lower costs, providing 15 percent of Britain's total sugar needs, while finding ways to produce profitable offshoots.

The company is bringing down costs to levels closer to those of producing cane sugar. At the same time, it is finding ways to become more profitable while demand for sugar is not growing in the UK and its prices are set by the European Union.

British Sugar, a unit of Associated British Foods Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: ABF.L), is the UK's sole beet sugar producer, making just over half the country's annual needs of 2.4 million tonnes of white sugar. The remainder is largely imported cane sugar from African, Caribbean and Pacific nations processed by Tate and Lyle Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: TATE.L).

Limited by its European Union beet quota from overproducing, British Sugar has been closing plants to increase efficiency. By early next year, it will be operating six factories, down from 13 some 15 years ago, largely in the flat, drier arable eastern areas of England.

As factories close, Wissington is taking up some of the overflow. It employs about 400 people during the peak winter processing season, a number that has come down over the past decade, while the plant has added new, more efficient equipment.

Wissington Plant Manager Melvyn Mallott says his factory is the largest processor of beet in Europe, and probably in the world as it vies for that title with a big U.S. beet processor in southern Minnesota.

This season it will slice more sugar beet than ever, up to 16,000 tonnes a day, or a 30-tonne sugar beet truck arriving every 30 seconds at the factory gate.

USING THE BYPRODUCTS

Extracting white sugar is a high-energy business. The plant, which has its own gas-fired power station, has started to make use of the excess heat, water and cardon dioxide emissions by piping them into adjacent glasshouses.

The glasshouses, completed last year, churn out thousands of tonnes of tomatoes for supermarket group Safeway (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: SFW.L).

Ian Ball, manager of the tomato project, says the excess heat, water and carbon dioxide cut his overall costs by 20-30 percent, compared with the traditional glasshouse grower. Carbon dioxide helps grow the tomatoes some 50 percent quicker.

British Sugar is also trying to tap what were previously thought to be waste products from beet, but are now recognised as high-value vegetable extracts.

The average sugar beet root weighing around one kilogramme contains around 75 percent water, 17 percent sugar, five percent fibre and three percent ``other products''.

The beet processor tries to extract as much sugar as possible from the beet by slicing it and dissolving it in water. The factory siphons off the liquid solution, leaving the beet fibre for animal feed. It then evaporates the water to leave white sugar and a thick molasses liquid containing some sugar and the ``other products''.

This molasses was traditionally used as animal feed, but sugar processors have now discovered valuable extracts in the mix.

The only one British Sugar will talk about is called betaine, which is used as a high-value animal feed supplement and an ingredient in shampoos to add thickness and gloss to hair.

This market shows so much potential that British Sugar is investing 25 million pounds ($35.3 million) in a new resin separation plant at Wissington to treat the molasses and extract more sugar and products such as betaine. It will start operations early next year.

Mallot says British Sugar is not the first to extract betaine, but this is the biggest ever investment in this area. Now the company is looking at a number of other as yet secret products that could come out of the new separation plant.