Geograph - photograph every grid square

The Irish Sugar Company, part of Greencore, closed the Mallow sugar beet processing factory in 2006, after 80 years of sugar production on the site, allegedly on the basis of unacceptable changes in the European Union sugar subsidy programme. The consequent unemployment of a substantial proportion of Mallow's workforce has caused understandable hardship, resentment and bitterness. Cork County Council have recently commissioned a study into the viability of ethanol production at the mothballed site.