Sugar

Sugar is sucrose, a carbohydrate found in every fruit and vegetable. All green plants manufacture sugar through photosynthesis, the process by which plants transform sunlight into their food and energy supply.

Once photosynthesis creates sugar, plants have the unique ability to change sugar to starch and starch to various sugars for storage. This diversity provides us with a wide variety of tasty fruits and vegetables, from the starchy potato to the sweet carrot.

Sugar cane contains sucrose in large quantities, and that's why it's used as a commercial sources of sugar. A stalk of the cane plant contains about 14% sugar.

The extraction or purifying process separates the natural sugar stored in the cane stalk from the rest of the plant material. Traditional processing involves a) grinding the cane and pressing it to extract the juice; b) boiling the juice until it thickens and begins to crystallize; c) spinning and drying the crystals in a centrifuge to produce raw sugar; d) washing and filtering to remove the last remaining plant materials and color; and e) crystallizing, drying and packaging.

The Group's sugar activities are to be the mainstay of the business with a view to developing sustainable industrial operations fuelled by its own renewable energy program. Sugarcane is one of the most versatile and sustainable crops capable of simultaneously generating a food crop, bio fuel and electricity. The Group shall be growing sugar to feed the local demand of over 600,000 MTs per annum whilst generating over 40Mw of power and 8M litres of ethanol.