quick links

• About Us
  • Introduction
  • Corporate Information
  • SA Sugar Industry Structure
  • History of TH Sugar
    • The Beginnings
    • Arrival in Natal
    • The Early Years
    • The Empire Grows
    • The New Order
    • The Present
• Operations
  • South Africa
    • Overview
    • Agriculture
    • Sugar Mills
      • Maidstone Mill
      • Darnall Mill
      • Amatikulu Mill
      • Felixton Mill
    • Refinery
    • Cape Sweeteners
    • Voermol Feeds
    • Marketing
    • Technology & Engineering
  • Mozambique
  • Zimbabwe
    • Triangle Sugar
    • Hippo Valley
  • Swaziland
• Products
  • Sugars
    • Retail
    • Speciality
    • Industrial
  • Animal Feeds
  • Technology
  • Industrial Sweeteners
• Customer Centre
  • Customer Care
  • Sugar Manufacture Process
  • Hints & Tips
  • Diabetes
  • Aspartame
  • Careers
  • FAQ
  • Links
• Contact Us
  • South Africa
  • Mozambique
  • Zimbabwe
  • Swaziland

Bio-Ethanol

Renewable Energy

Globally, sugar cane’s biomass is increasingly being acknowledged as a partial answer to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Many countries have already legislated for a renewable energy component in their national energy strategies and others are contemplating such a move – South Africa included. Electricity generation and fuel ethanol are two examples.

Renewable energy in South Africa is rapidly becoming a political imperative. Driven by non-economic issues such as protection of the environment, employment creation and security of energy supply, the South African Government has committed itself to the use of renewable energy (electricity, biofuels and other).

Tongaat Hulett Sugar (THS) is broadening its strategic focus away from a narrow sugar definition to a much broader bio-fuels and sweetener approach. This, together with the global movement towards “green” and environmentally friendly products and processes provides an opportunity to use sugar cane as a natural renewable source to supply extracts, chemicals and material from its constituent fibres and juice. This has driven THS to reconsider the potential inherent in sugar cane, not only from a sucrose-as-sugar perspective, but also from the perspective of using the full biomass inherent in sugar cane. These developments present an opportunity for THS to diversify more meaningfully into co-generation and fuel alcohol. The energy market has the advantage of being a large and growing market in which a local supplier has a comparative advantage. It is also envisaged that the sugar factory of the future may produce direct white sugar, electricity and fuel alcohol (ethanol), having the flexibility to switch between these three products according to relative returns.

Making electricity and ethanol from sugar cane are both well-established technologies and competitive amongst other renewable energy technologies. Looking forward, Government is likely to align itself with renewable energy as the effects of an expected increasing price trend for crude oil impact the economy and as international pressure mounts for government to subscribe to its Kyoto Protocol commitments to alleviate climate change. Importantly also, Government is looking to implement its renewable energy strategy to drive job creation and economic growth in the resource-poor rural regions of the country.