Wissington is a sugar beet factory which I see on my commute to and from Ely as I cross the bridge at Brandon Creek. I can also smell the beet processing when the wind is from the south at the right time of year.
The factory is supplied by more than 1,000 growers from Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, with the average distance between farm and factory being about 28 miles.
Image: Copyright Martyn Fordham
There are suggestions from Farmer's Weekly that the Sugar Beet factory at Cantley is going to close with production moving to other plants, including Wissington.
Wissington is actually the largest processing plant in the country and is operated by British Sugar.
In December 2025 it was processing 20 000 tonnes a day.Towards the end of 1925, British Sugar opened the doors of its factory at Wissington for the first time. Back then the beet was delivered by rail and barge and the factory processed 600 tonnes per day. Over 90 years later the factory at Wissington is the largest and the most cost effective sugar processing site in Europe.
As with all its factories, British Sugar has made significant investments. In 2000, British Sugar built and opened a glasshouse powered by the heat generated by the factory’s Combined Heat and Power plant. Today, this glasshouse has grown to cover 18 hectares, the UK’s largest single glasshouse.
In 2007, Wissington also became the location of the first UK bioethanol plant, winning an award from the Renewable Energy Association for the best new project, in its first year of operation.
The plant can now produce up to 64,000 tonnes of bioethanol per year. Complex heat recovery systems minimise the energy demand of the plant. This ensures the plant achieves the low carbon footprint required to produce renewable biofuels.
Around January, there are plenty of sugar beet lorries on the road, emptying the storage piles, which Kevin Crossley-Holland refers to in his poem 'Norfolk Mountains'.
The waste is also food for the thousands of pink footed geese which come down from the Arctic for the winter months and form part of Norfolk's natural landscape.
When I first moved to King's Lynn in the late 80s there was a sugar beet factory by the river and the smell of beet being processed was a common feature: you knew you were back in the town during beet processing season.
And when living in Snettisham I would frequently stand outside as thousands of pink footed geese flew over during the early winter months.
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