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All sugar refined by Tate & Lyle Europe comes from sugar cane, a tropical grass which grows up to five metres high and requires copious amounts of sun and water. Sugar cane is grown from short lengths of cane called 'setts', which are ready for harvesting from between eleven and eighteen months. The sugar canes produce large amounts of sugar in their palm-like leaves, which is stored in the stalk. Each sett can produce six or seven crops before it needs to be replaced.Harvesting is carried out mechanically or by hand, with the dry leaves or 'trash' often being burned off beforehand to assist the subsequent processing.
Once harvested, the cut canes must be processed as quickly as possible to conserve the sugar and to prevent microbial degradation.This first stage of processing is carried out in factories close to the growing area. The canes are cleaned, crushed and shredded, then sprayed with hot water to extract the juice. The juice is filtered, concentrated by evaporation under vacuum, and crystallised, before being removed from the remaining mother liquor by centrifuge.
Once the economic limit of extraction of sugar from sugar syrups is reached, we are left with the remaining mother liquid, known as 'molasses'. This is a useful by-product which may be used for fermentation processes or animal feed. Bagasse, the residual fibre from the cane, is mainly used as boiler fuel at the factory.
At this point, the sugar is partly purified and in a concentrated, crystallised, microbiologically stable form suitable for bulk handling, storage and transport to refineries around the world.
The raw cane sugar is despatched by bulk carriers to refining plants usually located close to deep water terminals such as at Tate & Lyle Europe's refinery in London. The storage shed at our Thames refinery can hold up to 70,000 tonnes – sufficient to supply the refinery for about 20 days of normal production.
The refining process composes of: