Passing the sugar is a sticky business
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.but one that British Sugar has in the bag. David Wilcox has been admiring its facilities and transport policy
'ERY MAN, woman and child II, this year, work his or her )y through an average of 16kg 5lb) of sugar. And this is just sugar we are aware of, the gar that we buy in shops or insume in restaurants and cansns. This amounts to 0.9m nnes a year, and a further 1.4m nnes is used in food proqesig and soft drinks.
British Sugar is the only home oducer of sugar from beet. It ipplies about 55 per cent of the lited Kingdom's total sugar reiirement — all other Britishocessed sugar is made from 'ported cane.
The last decade has seen itish Sugar grow out of all cognition thanks to the UK ining the EEC. Britain has been )mpelled by the Common Agriiltural Policy to import less 3 ne sugar and use more mestically grown sugar beet stead.
This has meant that since 1973 ritish Sugar has been able to ramatically step up white sugar roduction and supply sugar stionwide instead of concentra ting in its own "backyard" of East Anglia.
One of the inherent problems in the sugar beet industry is the enormous difference in the pattern of production and the pattern of consumption. Production is almost exclusively based in East Anglia and the beet growing season means that all the sugar production is done in the four months from the beginning of October until the end of January.
During this four-month "campaign" processing goes on for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right through the Christmas period.
British Sugar's problem is to convert the enormous wintertime surge of sugar in East Anglia into a smooth, yearround supply for the whole of the UK.
To achieve this, British Sugar's transport and distribution has to work particularly closely with the production and storage functions of the corn pany. The man overseeing this is British Sugar's head of transport and distribution, Douglas Crowland, who is based at the head office and factory in Peterborough.
When I visited him, there was a never-ending stream of hauliers' bulk tippers (plus the odd farm tractor and trailer) bringing in the sugar beet to the factory; it takes about eight tonnes of beet to make one tonne of sugar.
There are 13 British Sugar factories (mainly close to the Eastern beet growing area) which produce sugar in a variety of forms. The large industrial users take theirs in bulk, either as dry granulated sugar or as a liquid; both types are delivered by road tanker. At one time rail freight was also used but this is no longer true.
The other British Sugar factories concentrate on the production of bagged sugar (50kg or 25kg bags for customers such as bakeries who do not have bulk storage facilities) or packet sugar — the familiar 1kg packs sold in shops. There is also a whole range of other packeted sugars such as those used in the catering trade and "specials" like icing sugar.
Despite the scale of the business, British Sugar does not have any of its own commercial vehicles. As an example, the bulk dry sugar is delivered to the industrial customers by 147 tankers, all in British Sugar's blue and white livery but all operated and owned by four different contract hire haulage companies. BRS provides about half of them while the remainder come from Mitchell Cotts, John Taylor of Ailsworth and Turners of Fordham.
The same system applies in the case of the 38 liquid sugar tankers; these are on contract hire from Thomas Allen (a P&O company) and Tankfreight (an NFC company). All the contracts include drivers and maintenance.
I asked Doug Crowland why a company the size of British Sugar does not run its own vehicles.
Doug explained that British Sugar is no recent convert to contract hire; it has never run its own vehicles and is convinced that this is the right policy. The customary advantages of contract hire apply but perhaps the most important one for British Sugar is avoiding the enormous capital expenditure that would otherwise be required for such a sizeable fleet of costly bulk tankers. "When it comes to capital investment, manufacturing must have priority," reasoned Doug Crowland. This has been particularly true in the last decade when British Sugar has poured so much money into its factory expansion and modernisation programme.
British Sugar is sure that the extra cost of contract hire from the haulier adding his profit margin to the true operating costs is more than offset by using the money that would otherwise be tied up in vehicles to produce more sugar. In short, sugar manufacturing shows a better return than road haulage.
The other benefits mentioned by Doug Crowland include the fact that British Sugar does not need an Operator's Licence, has no maintenance worries and avoids any industrial relations problems in the transport field.
But why use so many contract hire companies; four of them for dry bulk sugar and two for the liquid sugar? "The element of competition is always good," answered Doug, adding that between them the various contract hire companies can base vehicles very close to the various sugar factories.
This last point partially explains why BRS has the lion's share of the British Sugar dry tanker work — the BRS depot network gives flexibility if vehciles need to be moved to work out of a different sugar factory.
Opponents of contract hire might claim that if you hand over the responsibility and worries of the fleet operation to a contract hire company you also hand over some of the control and that this is not so desirable. This does not seem to be the case with British Sugar, which firmly believes that it has got the best of both worlds.
The contract (normally for five years) leaves the choice of vehicle chassis or tractive unit to the haulage company but British Sugar retains the choice of the tank.
Its engineers specify aluminium alloy tanks by Murfitt for the 147 dry sugar bulkers, fitted with pneumatic discharge equipment powered by a pto from the vehicle. They are a mixture of maximum weight artics and sixwheel 24-ton rigids, the latter deisgned to cope with the industrial customers who do not have adequate storage space to accept a 20-tonne bulk delivery of sugar. In the case of the 38 liquid sugar tankers (which are all artics) British Sugar's engineers' specification is for stainless steel tanks. All the tanks are of the single compartment design. Because the contract hire hauliers can choose their own type of tractive unit or chassis there is quite a variety: Daf, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Ford and Leyland.
Scheduling the tankers is another aspect which British Sugar has kept firmly within its own grasp. All the orders for bulk dry and liquid sugar come to the British Sugar head office at Peterborough. Having been keyed into the system via the visual display units these bulk orders are passed through to the adjacent planning office where just three men can plan the daily movements of all 185 tankers.
They allocate the load to be drawn from the factory producing the correct type of sugar nearest the customer, place the load with the contract tank haulier working out of that factory and even allocate the load to a particular vehicle in that fleet. Each of the six contract hire hauliers gives weekly notifi cation of vehicle availability to the three British Sugar traffic planners in Peterborough.
This system of centralised planning for the bulkers relates back to the need to supply sugar throughout the year from the enormous stocks built up during the four-month campaign. With centralised control of bulk deliveries, British Sugar can ensure stocks at the various factories are run down evenly, if necessary switching the sourcing of orders to suit the storage requirements.
A spin-off of this central planning is that it does away with the contact between the driver and the traffic staff; the two never meet and work for different companies.
The British Sugar planners do not feel this is a disadvantage. If there is any problem with a particular delivery the driver can tell the haulier who in turn contact the planner at Peterborough.
The planners have to plan legal working day but it is th haulier's 0-licence that is on th line. And at least the planner are not open to allegations c favouritism to certain driver when it comes to allocating th daily loads — they work o vehicle registration number; not drivers' names.
The distribution of the annu; half a million tonnes or so c British Sugar's bagged an packet sugar is organise slightly differently. It is destine for the supermarket shelf, th canteen kitchen and the baker: buns. Once again, there are n British Sugar-owned vehicle involved — the trunking an distribution is done by outsid hauliers but who are paid a rat per tonne rather than being o contract hire.
This work is sufficiently Ion term to enable most of th vehicles to be painted in Britis Sugar's "Silver Spoon" trad name livery and the haulier used are from an approved lis The number of vehicles used ; any one time on this bag an packet distribution varies wit the market's demand for suge and this need for flexibility another important reason 'lc using external hired-in tran port.
The busiest period is in Jur because of the July 1 EEC pric review and 350 vehicles will t used at this time. This figure w be nearer 250 during the quiet' times of the year.
Customers' orders for the bE d packet sugar also come to British Sugar Peterborough ice where they are keyed into vdu's for invoicing and )cessing. Once the order has en allocated to the approate factory the delivery note is tomatically printed out by the note printer in the dispatch ice at that factory.
It is up to the dispatch clerk at 3 factory to match these bag/cket loads to the hauliers' hides working out of that fac-y and so once again the ntrol of vehicle scheduling reains with British Sugar.
Much of this bag/packet work full artic loads — supermarket am n distribution depots and sh and carry warehouses take St quantities of sugar — and a vehicles used include 32-ton w artics as well as 16-ton rigid xvans.
As with the bulkers, British igar does not stipulate what pe of tractive unit or chassis is ed but does specify box boas that can take a minimum of pallets with side access via Je curtains or sliding doors. Despite the proliferation of Ipermarket chains there are II smaller stores that have nited space and can take no ore than a tonne or so of icket sugar. To make these nailer deliveries on a multiop basis with vehicles operatg solely out of the British igar factories is not feasible — e stem mileage from the Bury Edmunds factory to Cornwall, r instance, is clearly too great r multi-drop distribution.
So British Sugar uses 10 distriJtion terminals which are locad near to the larger population :ntres to handle these smaller -ops up to six tonnes. The inimum delivery is 500kg hich is roughly half a pallet of le usual 1kg packets.
The terminals are carriers' deAs which carry small stocks of acket sugar. The carriers' 3hicles normally have a load composed entirely of sugar, the only exception being in the most remote areas such as Cumbria where the carrier may include other products to make up the load.
When 38-tonners become a reality in three months' time, British Sugar will be able to take only partial advantage of the increased weights. Explained Doug Crowland: "In the short term 38 tonnes will not help with the bulk tankers because so many customers just will not be able to accept a 24-tonne delivery — that's why we still use the six-wheelers. And to carry the extra weight we would have to have the tanks stretched."
But 38 tonnes will most definitely be useful for the artics working on the bag/packet sugar transport. Within the current 32.5-tonne limit 16 or 17 pallets can be carried on a 12.2m (40ft) curtained-sided trailer but this will increase to 20 pallets after May 1.
Some of the hauliers operating artics on behalf of British Sugar are already re-equipping with triaxle trailers — BRS alone will be using 25 triaxle trailer/38tonne combinations to run out of the Bury St Edmunds factory and packeting complex by the end of this month, in readiness for May 1.
The four-month-long sugar beet campaign ends any time now and the processing plant in the British Sugar factories will be virtually silent for the next eight months (apart from a little out-of-season refining). But sugar stocks are now at their highest, with a million tonnes stored either in bulk form in the factories' silos or in bag/packet form on pallets in temperatureand humidity-controlled warehouses.
The recent opening of a new packeting complex adjacent to the Bury St Edmunds factory means that British Sugar can reduce its dependence on public warehousing. This complex (not yet fully operational) is the largest and most advanced sugar packeting plant in the world and has storage to match.
Its high bay storage area offers nine-high pallet racking with computer-controlled driverless cranes to place and retrieve pallets, all in a carefullycontrolled atmosphere. It is not yet fully racked but when full will provide storage for 22,000 tonnes of packet sugar — equivalent to a month's supply for over 16m people.
It is investment in facilities like these, backed up by an equally effective transport policy, that enables British Sugar to point to such an enviable growth record.