Late flurry boosts outgoers scheme
Late flurry boosts outgoers scheme
A LAST-MINUTE flurry of applications helped boost the volume of beet tonnage transferred under the British Sugar outgoers scheme, which closed on Mon, Oct 15.
At one stage it looked as if BS would struggle to reallocate even 500,000t under the scheme, which aimed to remove non-growers from the industry and consolidate production closer to its processing facilities.
But the firms Paul Bee says agents were still delivering transfer forms right up to the 5pm deadline, and the total exchanged is likely to be over 640,000t, with more than 1200 growers leaving the industry and about 100 newcomers applying to start.
"I think in the end the scheme has been quite successful," says Duncan Clarke of Boston-based broker DCFM which shifted more than 220,000t of quota. "We sold 44,000t into York, which was what BS wanted, and moved 23,000t away from Newark."
But he still feels the sugar company would have hoped for more quota to have changed hands. "There are still plenty of non-growers out there who have hung on to their contract for various reasons."
The average contract price was about £30/t, which Mr Clarke believes was below expectations. *