British Sugar plans to close it’s Newark factory to deliveries from Friday 18 February.

Agriculture communications manager Paul Bee, said: “Any extension to this date will be on a day-to-day basis, and reliant on the availability of sufficient processable beet.”

Any Newark-area grower who believes their crop is still processable, and wishes to deliver to another factory after this date, remains able to do so and should contact their British Sugar agricultural manager, he said.

Over the past few weeks, good-quality beet has been diverted to Newark from East Anglia to keep the factory running and allow local processors to keep delivering, said Mr Bee.

“This strategy has been successful in ensuring beet processing was able to continue at the factory. We will continue to focus on processing as much beet as possible at our East Anglian factories for the remainder of the campaign, which normally ends towards the end of February.”

It is estimated that more than 75% of the Newark factory area’s 1.3m tonne beet crop will have been delivered by the end of the 2010/11 campaign, he added.

“This level of deliveries is attributable to the hard work and combined efforts of growers, hauliers, contractors and British Sugar staff working together to prioritise and process beet following the unprecedented weather conditions.”