Industries
Sugar
Sugar, saccharose or sucrose is a natural sweetener manufactured from cane or beet. The final sugar from cane or beet mainly has the same characteristics, but the different structure of the two crops gives different impurities that require special treatment in processing.
Sugar beet is robust to cold and hot climatic conditions and is mainly grown in Europe, North America, Chile and China, whereas cane is grown in warmer areas like the Caribbean, Central America, Asia, Africa and Australia. As beet growing has less demand for water, there is ongoing development of beet varieties suitable for warmer climates.
The processing of raw materials is a highly seasonal industry, with season lengths of approximately 3 to 8 months for beets and 5 to 11 months for cane. More than 70% of the world’s sugar is produced from sugar cane — the rest is produced from sugar beet.
Production steps
Beet sugar
From washing and slicing to extraction in the DSSE diffuser, purification and refinement.
Production steps
Cane sugar
Green harvesting, juice extraction, clarification, crystallization and refining.