Diversity is key to South Africa’s sugar industry

The South African Sugarcane Research Institute (Sasri) reports that diver- sity is a key factor in today’s highly integrated sugar milling operations.

Mills in the country produce a range of other products, such as ethyl alcohol, as well as furfural and its derivatives, although these activities are outside the industry partnership formed under the South African Cane Growers’ Association.

Four of the mills, which produce their own refined sugar, are referred to as ‘white end’ mills. Part of the raw sugar produced by Tsb Sugar is refined at the Malelane ‘white end’, in Mpumalanga, and the balance is exported through the sugar terminal, in Maputo.

The rest of the raw sugar that is produced at the remaining mills and is not used by the milling companies for exports of bagged refined sugar and direct consump- tion raw sugar is routed to Durban, where it is either refined at the Tongaat Hulett’s central refinery or stored at the South African Sugar Association sugar terminal prior to export.

There are about 38 200 registered sugar cane growers, who produce on average about 20-million tons of sugar cane from 14 mill supply areas. More than 36 500 are small-scale growers, of which 16 280 deli- vered cane in the last season, which con- tributed to 9% of the total crop. Sasri indicated that with the economic development and empowerment of previously disadvantaged people, a growing number of black farmers continue to enter the field of sugar cane agriculture.

There are about 1 626 large-scale growers who produce 82,6% of total sugar cane production. Milling companies with their own sugar estates produce 8,4% of the crop.

Sasri operates the only sugar cane quarantine facility in South Africa, and reports that it is the leading sugar cane agricultural research institute in Africa, and that it is world renowned for its research into the development of new sugar cane varieties and improved crop management and farming systems that increase profitability.

Meanwhile, the South African Sugar Millers’ Association represents the interests of all sugar millers and refiners in South Africa. The association’s aims cover partnership administrative matters, legislative measures affecting the industry, and sup- port for training and scientific and techno- logical research.

The cane testing ser- vice (CTS) provides a specialist service under contract to individual mill group boards to determine the quality of individual grower cane deliveries to the mill for cane payment purposes.

This analytical che- mistry service assesses the recoverable value content in cane deli- vered to the mill by growers to provide a neutral and objective basis to calculate the recoverable value (RV) content. The RV is the measure of the value of the sugar and molasses that will be recovered from the sugar cane delivered by the individual grower. The CTS also provides a technical audit of the distribution between millers and growers to ensure a fair and equitable division of proceeds.

A range of services is provided to the industry on a user-pays basis, including specialist advice on challenges identified by growers, soil and leaf analyses through the fertiliser advisory service, as well as yearly short courses on sugar cane agriculture at junior and senior levels.

source: engineeringnews