Sugar Factory

If you saw a factory like this from the distance, would you want to go in there? We did!

Here in northern Queensland two main products are bananas and sugar. There are big fields of sugar cane (Zuckerrohr), much like those I had seen in Fiji. But while the Fijian farmers still cut the cane completely by hand, here in Australia they now use harvesting machines.

The cane must be processed within 16 hours of cutting, or else it will go bad. It is also rather heavy. That's why they transport it on special railways to the sugar mills. There is one harvest per year and the harvesting season is now, in winter. And so we had the chance to visit a sugar mill and see the whole process in action.

They do tours for visitors in one or two of the factories, and we were in a small group, wearing closed shoes, safety glasses and orange helmets. We looked like "Bob the Builder"! :)

The cane is first shredded and milled and the juice is pressed out. The dry cane straw is burnt in huge ovens; this heat is used to produce steam and electricity. The juice is cleared and boiled until you get a sugar syrup; then they have a way to let sugar crystals grow in that hot syrup, and to extract these in fast spinning centrifuges. Finally the sugar crystals are blow-dried with hot air in giant tumblers.

The output is raw sugar (brown in color, not refined), molasses (a heavy syrup similar to Grafschafter Goldsaft, but here it is used to feed stock), cane mud (used as a fertilizer), ashes, steam, smoke, CO2, and some extra electricity. From 8 tons of cane they produce 1 ton of sugar. Not a bad ratio.

Alex and I always like to do factory tours, and this one was loud, noisy, and interesting. (Da hammer wieder mal was gelernt! :)