Beet Ireland wound up by directors

Beet Ireland, the company formed with a view to rebuilding the Irish sugar beet processing industry, has been wound up.

The project, led by Michael Hoey of Country Crest, involved Jim O’Regan, the former IFA sugar beet committee chair, Simon Cross of Cross Engineering, Kildare farmer Pat Cleary, Country Crest’s CFO Chris Harmon and Brian Arnold of Agenda Consulting.

Together they formed Beet Ireland in 2010, holding a series of public meetings that gathered huge farmer attendances. It was only four years after Irish Sugar had closed Mallow and Carlow sugar processing plants in quick succession.

In 2018, it published a formal proposal to build a processing plant, capable of processing 1.4m tonnes of beet. The vision was that producers would become shareholders in a co-op structure, sharing in dividends from future profits.

In June 2019, Beet Ireland announced the end of its campaign. Land they purchased in Kildare was recently sold and on 1 December last, at a meeting at Country Crest headquarters, the six directors agreed to wind up the company.