Reports CTRM for Agricultural and Soft Commodities | Page 33

CTRM for Ags & Softs
Raw sugar supply is very concentratedin Brazil, EU,Thailand and refineries at destination representing 60% of white sugar
exports.On the demand side, white sugar trade is more atomized than the raw sugar trade, with the ten largest importing
countries representing less than 45% of white sugar demand.

Sugar Production
Sugar Cane
Sugar cane is essentially a giant grass that grows up to 3 meters in height in tropical and semitropical regions.It needs
rainfall and sunlight to grow, and the majority of the sugar cane production is not irrigated,relyingsolely on
rainfall.Harvesting the sugar cane is performed either manually or mechanically, and in both cases the cane is cut close to
the ground and the leaves removed. The plant re-grows each year from the original root.
The harvested sugar cane is transp orted as quickly as possible to the sugar mill to maximize the extraction of the
sugar.The sugar mill is typically located close by the sugar cane growing area in order to avoid delays, reduce transport
costs and related environmental impacts.
The first stage of processing is the extraction of the cane juice. In many factories, the cane is crushed in a series of large
roller mills. The sugary juice is separated from the fiber,which is used in the boilers. In other factories, a diffuser is used as
is described below for beet sugar manufacture. Either way, the juice is quite dirty and needs to be cleaned.
The juice is cleaned using slaked lime (a relative of chalk), which settles out a lot of the dirt so that it can be sent back to
the fields. Once this is done, the juice is thickened into syrup by boiling off the water using steam. Sometimes the syrup is
cleaned again, but more often, it just goes on to the crystal-making step without any more cleaning.
In the last stage, more water is boiled off until conditions are right for sugar crystals to grow. Once the crystals have
grown, the resulting mixture of crystals and mother liquor is spun in centrifuges to separate the two and then the crystals
are dried with hot air before being stored ready for dispatch.
Interestingly, the energy needs of the sugar mill are often met by converting the energy in the sugar cane fiber (called
bagasse) into heat and electricity. In many cases, the mill will generate electricity from steam, and a surplus of bagasse
can result in electricity being exported to local electricity users.The sugar mill usually produces raw sugar that then needs
refining, but in some cases the sugar mills have been modified to enable production of direct consumption sugars.
The raw sugar is shipped in bulk ocean-going vessels from the sugar mill directly to port-based refineries. There, a large
portfolio of sugar products are made from the bulk raw sugar byremoving the remaining impurities and color from the bulk
raw sugar. It is then tailored to meet the customers’ requirements. A full portfolio of sugars is produced in crystal, liquid
and syrup form.

Sugar Beet
White beet sugar is made from the beets in a single process, rather than the two steps involved with cane sugar. The
beets are harvested in the autumn and early winter and transported to the factory by large trucks. Beet is a rotational crop
requiring almost 4 times the land area of an equivalent sugar cane crop. The beets are also dirtier and have to be
thoroughly washed and separated from mud, stones, leaves and other debris and waste.
The clean beet is then sliced into thin chips to increase the surface area of the beet for enhanced sugar extraction. The
extraction is performed in diffuser where the beet is kept in contact with hot water for around an hour. The diffuser is
usually a large tank in which the beets make their way in one direction and the water goes in the other direction.The
exhausted beet slices are then pressed in screw presses to extract as much of the juice as possible. The pressed beet is
then turned into pellets, which are used as a constituent of animal feed.
The raw juice will usually contain about 14% sugar, and it must be cleaned before it can be used for sugar production.
This is performed using a process known as carbonatation where small clumps of chalk are grown in the juice. These
clumps collect a lot of the non-sugars as they form so that by filtering out the chalk, a lot of impurities are also removed.
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