Case Study: British Sugar achieves smarter operations and preserved technical expertise with IBM AI and digital twin technology

Sweet success at British Sugar by embracing advanced technology

British Sugar, the UK’s sole processor of sugar beet, needed to modernize decision-making, reduce manual information search, and protect decades of technical knowledge as experienced employees neared retirement. Working with IBM Consulting AI and Analytics and IBM Research, the company also wanted to address operational silos, unplanned downtime, and rising costs in a volatile supply chain.

IBM helped British Sugar build a data-driven transformation using AI, a smart-factory digital twin, IoT sensors, machine learning, and Azure OpenAI on Microsoft Azure. The results included a 20% reduction in time spent manually understanding data, a 25% drop in decision-making time, a 10% reduction in raw-material purification costs, and an expected 50% cut in the time needed to train new experts, while also improving maintenance, supply-chain visibility, and operational reliability.

British Sugar

Daniel Simkiss

Head of Industry 4.0