BEET Ireland is taking some time to consider the next step for its project, following its round of public meetings in December.

Its directors are assessing the €1,000 payments and pledges made for shareholdings in its proposed growers’ co-op.

BEET Ireland sought a thousand such shareholders to create a €1m fund to develop a processing facility at the site it bought in Ballyburn, Co Kildare.

The other key element is the land base farmers have indicated they will have to grow the crop. BEET Ireland envisages a 1.4m tonne requirement for the plant at full capacity. This would require a land base of 20,000ha (50,000ac) each year. Rotational requirements mean growers would need access to more than three times that acreage.

BEET Ireland made it known at farmer meetings in Carlow, Tipperary and Wexford that it had received considerable support and €1,000 co-op shareholding pledges from non-tillage farmers. It is still to be decided if these investors would join the growers’ co-op or a parallel co-operative structure for non-growers.

At all stages, the directors of BEET Ireland have made it clear that if they don’t receive the level of backing from farmers they need, they won’t bring the project any further. The meetings did see farmers challenge them on the financials, but more on the growing than the processing of the crop.