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How A Sugar Mill Works
Mon, January 26, 2015
While we were at the factory today, the staff allowed us to look around for ourselves and see the first few tonnes of cane being processed from the delivery phase to the grinding phase. The factory manager gave us a very brief explanation of how it works:

John Gillett - Factory Manager, BSI
"First thing that happens, the cane is weighed on the 100 tonnes scales that we have. After the cane is weighed, it's discharged into the cross carriers. The cross carriers feeds it into the feeder carrier. After the feeder carrier, we pass the cane through a set of cane knives and then through a set of shredders, which prepares the cane for milling. In other words, what it does, it shreds the cane and we referred to it as a perforation index and gets the cane condition, so that milling can start. It's about 16-18 hours, because we have to mill the cane, we have to go through the entire processing and then the crystallization process and all of that process will take roughly about 16 hours before we produce sugar."

Today, the farmers and millers aimed to have 6,000 tonnes of cane delivered to start with today. After the warm up days, the millers will push the efficiency of the factory to as high as is possible. This means 24 hour work days for the factory staff and the farmers who are cued up to deliver.

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