Research and Development Overview
The South African sugar industry, a strategically
important agro-processing industry in South Africa, is one of the
world’s low cost producers. However, in common with many other similar
industries, it is a mature industry, showing signs of decline and it is facing
a changing and increasingly competitive marketplace for diverse reasons,
including rising production costs (cane and factory), loss of skills, taxes on
sugar-containing beverages and dumped cheap imported sugar. It has become clear that for the industry to
remain competitive and sustainable into the future, breakthrough and even
disruptive technologies will be required to create the necessary step
change. It is understood that this can
be achieved by:
- Radically
reducing the costs of production and improving the profitability of producing
sugar by using novel processing technologies and strategies. This includes process optimization and
improving energy efficiency to reduce the “loss” of potential value. To help
achieve this, the SMRI has identified the potential of so-called Industry 4.0
technologies and systems to enhance the value of the data available to the
sugar factories, which is under-valued and under-utilized at present in terms
of relevant real-time insights and operational decision-making. The SMRI has
recently succeeded in attracting government and industry funding to embark upon
a project dubbed “Sugar Factory 4.0” to improve the value and utility of sugar
factory data (see STEP-SF4.0 Programme).
- Incorporating
a strategy of diversification and beneficiation by creating new revenue streams
(such as bioenergy and biochemical products) through adoption of an integrated
Biorefinery approach, in which biomass feed stocks are fully utilized in an
integrated manner to produce chemicals and bioenergy at least cost in a
sustainable manner. Indeed, the SMRI has been at the forefront of driving this
initiative within the South African sugarcane industry for many years and has
received substantial government and industry funding in support of such R&D
initiatives (see STEP-Bio Programme).
In addition to the two public-private
partnership-funded Programmes mentioned above, the SMRI continues to undertake
member-funded research within its Research Programme, principally in the area
of developing technologies and tools to improve unit operations and provide
insights as to how to reduce sugar losses and improve recoveries. The specific
projects on the current Research Programme are diverse in nature, but all are
directed to improving factory profitability through the use of novel
technologies or techniques to address long-standing and well-known limitations
and problems in sugarcane processing.
