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ABF Sugar’s businesses are working to deploy improved farming practices across their estates, trialling more regenerative agriculture approaches in some of their operations and working to increase resilience among growers in the agricultural supply chain.
Cane fields on the Nakambala sugar estate in Zambia
ABF Sugar attributes part of its business success to productive, high-yielding and robust agricultural practices at its African sugar estates and those of its third-party growers. The production of sugar beet and sugar cane faces challenges due to changing weather patterns, loss of biodiversity, land degradation and water scarcity. These conditions can lead to more volatile crop yields, further exacerbated by rising pest and plant disease pressures, as well as the reduced availability of active plant protection products due to stricter regulatory controls.
To gain deeper insight, ABF Sugar has partnered with Resilience, a sustainability intelligence company, to comprehensively assess its material nature-related dependencies, impacts, opportunities and risks. The insights gained from this project continue to inform the strategic direction and plans of ABF Sugar’s businesses over the next five years, enabling the division to make more informed decisions on future agricultural strategies that integrate both nature dependencies and climate impacts.
In 2026, ABF Sugar’s businesses experienced a range of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts and floods, which affected agricultural operations and farming practices. These events have reinforced the focus on development of innovative approaches that seek to strengthen resilience of agricultural systems and create new opportunities for the future.
ABF Sugar is an active member of the Sustainable Agricultural Initiative (SAI), the global food and drink industry platform that aims to develop more sustainable agriculture solutions. It is also a founding member of SAI's Regenerative Agriculture Platform.
Growers for Azucarera in Spain and British Sugar in the UK, as well as its estates in Africa, are using the SAI Platform Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) 3.0 tool to drive continual improvements on-farm. The tool assesses operations and benchmarks them against standards already being used in the field, such as Red Tractor Crops and Sugar Beet Standards in the UK or the Sustainable Sugarcane Farm Management System (SUSFARMS®), which all our South African growers use.
ABF Sugar has maintained FSA silver level equivalence across all its businesses’ own operations, and also grower operations in Nchalo and Dwangwa in Malawi. Illovo Sugar South Africa has achieved Proterra Certification for selected farms, Sezela Sugar Mill and Sezela downstream products factories. The long-term goal is to expand this programme to include additional cane-growing regions, ensuring that a greater volume of sugar delivered to the mills meets the criteria set by the FSA.
This process of assessing, improving and validating on-farm sustainability using SAI’s FSA tools aims to help to encourage farmers towards more sustainable practices and enable ABF Sugar to measure and demonstrate its collective progress toward its GHG emissions reduction targets.
Azucarera, through AIMCRA, conducts soil analyses for all growers to provide tailored agronomic recommendations on fertilisation, water and nutrient management. These analyses assess soil nutrient availability and often find that natural levels, especially of phosphorus and potassium, are enough to meet crop requirements.
In Tanzania, Kilombero Sugar introduced the FSA for Harambee AMCOS (Agricultural Micro-Credit Organisations) who supply its factory to evaluate farming practices, identify opportunities for improvement, and develop strategies for a continual improvement plan. The initiative also aims to strengthen the economic resilience of local farmers.
ABF Sugar businesses co-fund research institutions and partnership organisations with its growers, including:
These engagements aim to enhance crop resilience and productivity while reducing negative environmental impacts. This is achieved by partnering with SASRI in South Africa to trial new sugar cane varieties and working with the BBRO in the UK to test different approaches to monitoring emissions from sugar beet cultivation. The collaboration with AIMCRA and Agroteo in Spain strengthens the links between individual farmers and field technicians to provide better guidance on crop management.
As part of its Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) validated Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) targets, ABF Sugar has committed to maintaining no deforestation across its primary deforestation-linked commodities. The primary deforestation-linked commodities produced or sourced by ABF Sugar do not individually account for 5% or more of its total gross FLAG emissions.
In 2023, ABF Sugar completed a deforestation risk assessment to identify the most significant areas of production and sourcing within its value chain. This assessment identified sugar as its priority commodity. The business is working with external experts to map and monitor its sugar supply chains and to support alignment with relevant regulatory requirements, including the EU Deforestation Regulation, where applicable.
ABF Sugar is also promoting biodiversity and ecosystem health across its operations and supply chains through various initiatives. These include projects such as beetle banks and refuge areas, the use of cover crops and tree planting at its Nakambala site in Zambia and its sites in Malawi.
As a member of the Integrated Kilombero Multi-stakeholder Platform, led by the African Wildlife Foundation, Kilombero Sugar supports collaborative efforts in managing the conservation of natural resources including land, forests and water sources across the Kilombero Valley. By engaging in this platform, ABF Sugar aims to help protect critical ecosystems and support long-term water availability for agriculture and communities.
In recent years, the sugar beet industry has been significantly impacted by Virus Yellows disease, which is transmitted by aphids and reduces the yield and sugar content of each plant. Research into integrated pest management and alternative solutions for controlling Virus Yellows has become a priority for ABF Sugar’s UK and Spanish businesses as set out in the case study below.
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In 2026, British Sugar continued its collaborative work within its Virus Yellows Pathway, alongside NFU Sugar and the British Beet Research Organisation (‘BBRO’).
Within the Virus Yellows Pathway, work continues on researching innovative grower practices that can affect the aphids’ ability to detect sugar beet crops. This includes exploring the use of natural soil colourings or inter-row crops and grasses to camouflage the sugar beet, as well as using odours to distract the aphids from identifying the crop. The BBRO also has a series of trials evaluating the effectiveness of grasses containing endophytes, which are thought to repel insect pests and alter soil chemistry. Initial reports are showing promising results. In 2027, there will be six partially Virus Yellows-tolerant seed varieties available on the Recommended List that growers can choose to sow. These are not tolerant to the most damaging of the viruses. All this activity is backed up by an extensive monitoring programme that supports growers and advisers to make the correct agronomic decisions.
British Sugar is collaborating with agriculture biotechnology company Tropic and the plant science institute, The John Innes Centre (‘JIC’), to explore how to genetically edit sugar beet to confer resistance to the three yellowing viruses that make up the Virus Yellows disease complex. The project, now in its third year, makes use of Tropic’s Gene Silencing (GEiGS®) technology platform to make minimal and precise gene edits in sugar beet enabling the crop to resist infection. Work to date has focused on developing the sugar beet transformation platform, successfully generating gene-edited DNA solutions (GEiGS®) and testing their efficiency in cells. Multiple solutions with high silencing efficiencies are now available for testing in plants. This work, scheduled to begin in late 2026, will determine a shortlist of solutions to take forward for the generation of plants later in the project.
In February 2026, the project secured an additional GBP 1.1m of grant funding from Innovate UK’s Farming Futures R&D Fund, building on the GBP 660,000 received in 2024 at the initial stages of the research. This was jointly awarded to British Sugar, Tropic and JIC. The BBRO continues to support the projects.
The latest funding will allow the project team to advance research towards ensuring that precision bred solutions can be implemented across commercially relevant sugar beet varieties, conferring resistance to the most damaging and hard to target beet yellows virus.
By the end of the decade, it is hoped that the project team will have confirmation of Virus Yellows resistance in gene edited plants in the lab, which can then be assessed in field trials.
In Spain, the Research Association for Sugar Beet Crop Improvement (‘AIMCRA’) has continued to monitor aphid populations on plants and analyse early symptoms, such as yellowing and other potential indicators. As part of its ongoing activities, it has requested exceptional approval for the use of four active ingredients in cultivation for 2025, three insecticides and one fungicide. The team continues to regularly test various plant varieties and assess their impact on production, analyse resistance to fungicides, and develop strategies related to beet cultivation.
AIMCRA has also implemented an agronomic strategy and provided recommendations for the prevention of cercospora infection, as well as conducted trials in this field. It also proposed and coordinated the strategy to combat the yellows virus, identifying the most suitable active substances for its prevention and mitigation, and carried out fertilisation trials and alert systems across different geographical areas of Spain. In addition, it has conducted trials with various seed varieties adapted to address these diseases.
One of our Azucarera employees examining a sugar beet with a farmer on his farm, Spain
In collaboration with experts from the University of Cape Town (‘UCT’), our sugar businesses in Africa are conducting research on soil biodiversity in order to improve sugar cane yields in their southern African supply chains. The project aims to educate local teams and to develop protocols for on-farm teams to monitor soil biodiversity.
Overall, this project will deepen ABF Sugar’s understanding of the composition and resilience of soil biodiversity in sugar cane cropping systems while providing insights into how to improve soil biological quality.
ABF Sugar’s businesses in Africa plan to adopt the protocols recommended by this research to measure soil health in their fields, with the aim of encouraging and accelerating the adoption of these practices across their operations.
In 2026, UCT conducted training on the protocols at Nakambala in Zambia, Nchalo in Malawi and Ubombo in Eswatini, supporting the businesses in developing implementation roadmaps for their adoption.
Soil samples being collected at the Nakambala estate, Zambia
Working closely with partners, researchers and its own in‑house farming operations, British Sugar is exploring and piloting innovative approaches to reduce environmental impact while maintaining crop performance.
One key area of focus is through the work of the British Beet Research Organisation (‘BBRO’), co-funded by British Sugar and NFU Sugar. The BBRO is investigating a range of strategies to lower the carbon footprint of sugar beet production, including:
Alongside research, British Sugar is trialling practical innovations on its own ‘self-grow' farms. A pilot is underway using the ARA Field Sprayer by Ecorobotix, which leverages AI and high-resolution camera technology to identify and treat individual plants with pinpoint accuracy. This Plant-by-Plant™ technology has the potential to cut herbicide use by up to 90%, protecting biodiversity, improving soil quality, reducing impacts on water quality and reducing the risk of pesticide resistance.
In Spring 2026, British Sugar announced its collaboration with the Soil Association Exchange (‘SAX’), to financially reward its growers for improvements in UK sugar beet production’s sustainability credentials. The SAX independently verifies and financially rewards environmental improvements using measurements across six key areas, including soil, water, biodiversity and carbon.
The Exchange Market is open to UK growers to register verified improvements in environmental performance and access funding for activities that support reductions in UK sugar beet’s GHG emissions.
In a further step to support on-farm biodiversity, British Sugar has partnered with AgriSound to run a 24-month pilot of in-field pollinator sensors. These smart devices track the number and frequency of pollinators in real time via a live dashboard. The insights are helping growers make informed spraying decisions and identify areas where additional habitat or interventions could enhance pollinator activity. It has also installed a series of Wilder Sensing bird sensors around the perimeter of its Wissington factory to listen for birdsong and understand which species are in the local ecosystem.
A sugar beet grower with one of the agricultural account managers from British Sugar, UK
