British Sugar, part of Associated British Foods, provides sugar for the top brand names in sugar confectionery, chocolate confectionery, soft drinks and preserves, etc. The company has six factories in the UK, with each one split between a ‘beet end’ and a ‘sugar end’.

Typically, a factory processes beet between September and March, termed the ‘Campaign’.

The ‘beet end’ employs various processes to create ‘thick juice’, a liquid which has 65%

sugar content. The ‘sugar end’ boils the ‘thick juice’ and seeds it with tiny sugar crystals, providing the nucleus for larger crystals to form and grow to create sugar. The business of processing beet gives rise to several challenges which directly affect process efficiency, sugar yields from the beet, and ultimately factory profitability.

Discussion points
1 Why is a specific kind of costing needed for a process of this kind?
2 Why might the quantity of material output be less than the quantity input?