R&D

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:

1. Radically reducing the costs of production and improving the profitability of producing sugar by using novel processing technologies and strategies. This includes process optimisation 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-utilised at present in terms of relevant real-time insights and operational decision-making. The SMRI succeeded in attracting government and industry funding for a project dubbed “Sugar Factory 4.0” to improve the value and utility of sugar factory data (see STEP-SF4.0 Programme).
2. 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 feedstocks are fully utilised​ 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 providing 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.

The SMRI’s Research Programme is revised annually and is approved by the Institute’s Advisory Research Committee, which comprises representatives from all South African sugar milling companies, the South African Sugarcane Research Institute, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and universities, including the two SMRI Sugarcane Biorefinery Research Chairs. The various projects are guided and overseen by project steering committees, comprised of industry representatives and other subject matter experts.

Summarised details of the various research projects conducted can be found in the SMRI Annual Reports.