Sugar production in the European Union (EU) is governed by the Common Market Organisation for Sugar, generally known as the sugar regime. This regime has gone through major reforms in 2006, resulting in inefficient processors leaving the sugar industry, quota cuts and a significant reduction in the export of sugar from the EU onto the world market. It has also seen the allowance of 3 million tonnes of sugar from the Least Developed Countries (LDC) into the European market to correct the supply/demand imbalance. Recognising the potential for growth, the British Sugar Group has used this opportunity to demonstrate its capability for the potential of refining cane raw sugar from the LDC alongside beet thick juice. To this end, a raw sugar import facility and associated dissolving and filtration plant was installed at its Newark Factory, allowing the factory to process VHP cane raw sugar into white sugar during both beet slicing campaign and juice refining operations. This facility allowed processing of up to 30 kilo tonnes of raw sugar per operation and the £3 m investment was the first and important step into raw refining for British Sugar UK (BSUK). This paper discusses the installation, operational experiences and impact on processing and sugar recovery of processing VHP cane raw sugar with beet thick juice directly to the sugar end and through return to the beet end of the factory for treatment through carbonatation.
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