Brazilian Sugar Mills
The most advanced sugar mills in the world, Brazilian sugar mills are leaders in sugar 
production technology. Producing vast amounts of VHP raw sugar every year, (over 35 million tons is forecast for 2008) as well as lesser quantities of ICUMSA 150 and still smaller quantities of ICUMSA 45, Brazilian sugar mills have earned a stellar reputation for consistently producing the sugar that has made Brazil both the world’s largest producer and exporter of sugar.
As demand for sugar and sugar cane products grows, so too are Brazilian sugar mills growing in number and size. 2005 saw Brazil dotted with three hundred and twenty mills about the Sao Paulo, Pernambuco, and Algolas regions. At the time it was forecast that by the year 2015 there would be at least five hundred sugar mills in Brazil. This plan has been somewhat stymied by the governing body of the Sao Paulo region refusing to grant any further permits for new sugar mills in May of 2008 due to ecological and environmental concerns, but that is not stopping existing sugar mills from growing at impressive speeds, and some sugar mills have more than doubled in size since their inception. Sugar mills also continue to be built in the northern regions of Pernambuco and Algolas, the historical home of the Brazilian sugar mill.
The main product of Brazilian sugar mills is VHP sugar. Invented by the Brazilians in 1993, VHP sugar is a high pol raw sugar, which means that it has a sucrose content of more than 99.4%. This type of sugar is preferable to other raw sugars as it requires much less refining, and is of a higher quality than traditional raw sugar. Brazilian VHP raw sugar is exported to countries all around the world to undergo refining into the ICUMSA 45 sugar which has become a global standard. The bulk of these mills are in the United States of America. Some Brazilian mills do refine raw sugar juice into ICUMSA 150, or sometimes ICUMSA 45, but this is done on a much smaller scale.
Brazil’s strength as a sugar producing nation first emerged because of the vast amount of cultivatable land that Brazil possessed. It was simply possible to grow and mill more sugar than other countries because there was more space to do it. As the Brazilian sugar industry has evolved however, innovation and research are the two key factors that have kept Brazilian sugar mills at the top of the industry.
Brazil takes sugar cane very seriously, and a great deal of research has been done into the properties of sugar cane and developing new strains of sugar cane, selecting for traits such as a high sucrose yield, being able to grow in conditions which would be toxic to normal strains of sugar cane, and growing more strongly for successive generations, to name a few. There are currently over three hundred strains of sugar cane in use in Brazil, a number which dwarfs the varieties of sugar cane grown in most other sugar cane growing nations. Brazil even made use of modern gene sequencing techniques to map the sugar cane genome, an act which demonstrates very aptly just how serious the Brazilian sugar industry is when it comes to knowing their business.
This approach has paid off as other countries have seen the profitability of sugar and joined the market in hot pursuit of Brazil’s title. India is a good example of just such a country. A large nation with a great deal of land, India has risen up the ranks of sugar producing nations with great speed. However India does not yet have the same emphasis on the development of either sugar cane strains to suit their conditions, or processes which would optimize the processing and refining of sugar from sugar cane. For this reason Indian sugar production has fallen behind Brazil in recent years, though India is still a very strong player in the global sugar industry.
Brazilian sugar mills are not simply places where cane is crushed and pounded, and the sugar juice refined or processed, they are also locations for some of the most advanced research in the field. Every major mill has a team of scientists in house. These scientists monitor production and ensure that processes are efficient, but they also spend time researching new methods of sugar cane growth and sugar production.
A Brazilian sugar mill is a highly efficient machine, and nowadays, very little is wasted. Almost every element of the sugar producing process is recycled in some form, from the solid cane fiber, known as Bagasse, which is used to power the mill, and generates enough electricity when burned not only to power most sugar mills, but to also supply energy for sale on the national grid, to the water which is used to clean the sugar cane when it is brought in from the fields.
When sugar cane is first brought to the mill, it is loaded onto washing racks and sprayed to remove dirt, insects, and other unwanted contaminants. This water is collected after use and is channeled back to a pond, where the dirt from the cane sediments to the bottom of the pond, and is then collected for use as fertilizer on other sugar cane crops. This is a level of recycling which is unprecedented in almost any industry, let alone the sugar industry.
In addition to processing sugar, many Brazilian sugar mills also now boast sugar ethanol production facilities on site. Sugar ethanol is part of a new wave of bio fuel which is in high demand globally, and Brazilian sugar mills have wasted no time in adapting production lines and building new structures to exploit this fact. Brazil also claims world leader status in the use of bio fuels, with an estimated 45% of its power being sourced from renewable non petroleum sources every year. 15% of this energy comes from sugar ethanol.
Because global demand for sugar grows yearly, and because demand for bio fuel is likely to rise exponentially in the coming years, Brazilian sugar mills are in a very strong position heading into the future. Investment and interest in Brazilian sugar mills has never been higher, and as more money is invested into Brazilian sugar mills, we can expect to see more exciting developments coming out of those mills in the future, developments that will not only boost sugar production, but also provide the world with techniques for doing so in a sustainable and environmentally friendly fashion.
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We source sugar for our clients directly from the Brazilian Sugar Mills. Please contact us with your specific requirements and we will get back to your with current availability and price quotation within a few hours