Brazilian Sugar Mills
As the world demand for sugar and ethanol increases, so do Brazil’s sugar mills. Over the past few years, sugar mill 
numbers have been growing in Brazil, and they are forecast to continue doing so until at least 2015. In 2005, Brazil had 320 sugar mills, in 2006, this number had risen to 330. 140 more mills are set to be built by the year 2015. Some existing mills have expanded to almost twice their size , such as in the case of the Moema Sugar Mill, which grew from under 86,000 acres to now cover 173,000 acres of land and produce 880,000 tons of sugar and 185 million gallons of ethanol yearly. There is one small fly in the ointment however, and that is the news that the state of Sao Paulo, where the bulk of Brazil’s sugar growing and milling takes place has suspended licenses effective May 16, 2008 for new mills and refineries pending investigations into the environmental impact that they are likely to have.
Brazilian sugar mills are world famous for developing new and more efficient ways to transform sugar cane into sugar or sugar ethanol. At one time sugar mills were solely for the purpose of producing sugar, most often VHP raw sugar, but nowadays many mills co produce both sugar and sugar ethanol.
Many Brazilian sugar mills are highly efficient not only in the realm of sugar production, but in recycling their resources. Water used to wash sugar cane is filtered and recycled, and parts of the sugar cane itself are also used to fuel many sugar mills. The part of the sugar cane that is used to fuel sugar mills is called bagasse. Bagasse is the dry fibrous part of the sugar cane. Once considered nothing but a waste product and burned out in the fields, many mills now burn bagasse on site in such a fashion as to generate electricity. So much electricity is generated from bagasse that it more than powers the plant, and the surplus electricity is then sold on the national grid, further boosting the mill’s profitability.
Sugar mills normally source their sugar cane on site. Many mills either buy or lease the fields around the mill for the purposes of growing sugar cane. Growing sugar cane close to the mill cuts down considerably on transport costs, and also eliminates a potential middleman, the sugar caner grower.
There are a multitude of workers in a sugar mill responsible for overseeing the various stages of sugar and ethanol production, but it is not only laborers and managers who work in sugar mills. Most large Brazilian sugar mills have a team of scientists on board whose job it is to analyze the sugar cane, the soil in which is it grown, the effects of insects and biological pathogens on the cane, and many other factors which impact how well the cane grows, and how high its sucrose content is. Brazilian sugar scientists are always on the lookout for ways to boost sucrose levels in sugar cane and ways to grow it more efficiently.
Brazil’s world leading status in sugar cane production is not simply down to the sheer size of its landmass and the ability to plant more cane than other countries. Both the Brazilian government and private investors in Brazil have put much time and energy into sugar cane research and development, even going so far as to sequence the sugar cane genome. It is for this reason that Brazil has held onto the title of being the largest word producer of sugar cane, sugar, and sugar ethanol, even as India has turned large swathes of land over to sugar cane production and has funded many new mills.
Most Brazilian sugar mills have special efficiency teams which work on each stage of the milling and refining process, ensuring that procedures are as efficient as possible. Some mills even assign a worker to ensure that all the sugar cane brought to the mill makes it into the first stage of processing, and that no stray stalks of cane are lost by falling off trucks.
By way of illustrating the incredible efficiency of many Brazilian sugar mills, let’s look at the first stage of the milling process, which involves washing the cane before it is shredded and ground up and crushed. The sugar cane, which is normally freshly cut and transported directly to the sugar mill from the fields, or which may possibly have been waiting a few days if there is a surplus of cane, is sent into a washing rack and sprayed heavily with water. Not only is the water used to clean the cane recollected, filtered and used again, it is actually collected, dirt and all, and sent out to ponds, where the silt from the cane settles to the bottom. This silt is then collected and sent back out into the fields to be used as fertilizer on the cane. In a Brazilian sugar mill, not even dirt is wasted!
Once the cane is washed, it is ready for milling, which is also a very efficient process. First the cane is pounded flat, and then shredded by sharp automated blades, before being sent through high pressure rollers. By the end of the process there is nothing left but bagasse, the dry insoluble material that makes up sugar cane.
The sucrose juice sometimes contains small amounts of cane residue, but fortunately for the sugar mill, sugar cane is much lighter than water, so this is easily skimmed from the top of the juice.
The exact processes involved in processing and/or refining sugar vary from mill to mill. Some mills will merely boil the sugar and crystallize it several times in order to produce VHP sugar and molasses, which are then sold and normally exported to offshore refineries, whereas others will both mill sugar and refine it directly on site.
Brazilian sugar mills are becoming very attractive investments for international corporations, and as more and more money flows into sugar mills over the next decade, we can expect to see further exponential growth. Though sugar prices have dropped in 2008, Brazilian sugar mills produce sugar so cheaply (at a cost of as low as 5 cents per pound in some mills in the Sao Paulo region), that they maintain profitability even when world sugar prices drop. The demand for sugar ethanol is also a major contributing factor to the ongoing success of Brazilian sugar mills. As many countries try to free themselves from dependency on fossil fuels, Brazil is leading the way, with over 45% of the energy currently used in the country being derived from renewable fuels, and almost 15% coming directly from sugar cane. The world is very much sitting up and taking notice of the way that Brazil manages its resources and finds fuel sources, and Brazil is poised to provide many of the world’s countries with a relatively low cost fossil fuel substitute, which is why we are sure to see many many more Brazilian sugar mills dotting the countryside in the years to come.
Where to buy Brazilian Sugar
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