May 2024 Newsletter

Sucrotech in rescue mode.

Saving a landmark engineering company servicing the local industry.

The owners of the Cimex Spares, previously known as NRH Engineering, then Mercury Engineering and Nkozi Engineering, are retiring and were closing the workshops and selling the machinery off.

Sucrotech (Pty) Ltd was reliant on Cimex for some of our larger components machining and with the shutting down of Cimex, we would not be able to have the work done locally in KZN.

Instead of buying only the machinery that were necessary to do Sucrotech’s work, we investigated the potential loss of machinery and the technical skills to all local industries, including the Sugar industry of which Sucrotech is part.

To save this from happening Sucrotech has bought up 21 of the machines and together with part of the staff and machine technicians have formed a new entity, now referred to as Cimex Engineering, operating out of new premises in New Germany.

Cimex Engineering, now a division of Sucrotech (Pty) Ltd, will be run by a separate autonomous staff which would be overseen by Anthony Feeke. As you will understand this is a large undertaking, but it will be for the benefit of all, and we rely on your assistance and your continued support in the future to make it work.

K3300F ‘B’ Product crystal damage

 This startup we will include the commissioning and local testing of the BMA Crystal Deflector Plate

The K3300F Crystal Deflector plate reduces the amount of crystal breakage to allow better sized crystal to be used as footing.

Test carried out on ‘C’ product in Australia with the crystal deflector K3300F machine indicated a crystal breakage of 1,5% by weight and only a 20% damage to large crystals. As a comparison to a standard K2300 machine housing, without a crystal deflector and based on our experience, the crystal break (without deflector) is much higher – up to 95%.

The commissioning and testing of two local machines will be undertaken in April together with BMA with our partners at AMSI. The results from the testing will be published in our next Newsletter for parties that are interested in enhancing the boiling from footing.

Performance of FFE’s.

Seven FFE’s evaluated at  CPL Sugar Factory in India and compared with Bundaberg Australia FFE.

OVC Cooling Crystalizers.

 Single stage membrane filters.

BMA’s cooling crystalliser concept is based on a vertical unit with oscillating cooling tube bundles. The aim is to remove as much sucrose as possible from the mother liquor by continuing the crystallisation of crystals that have already formed. Since this is the last desugarization phase in the sugar production process, any process control errors would have an irreversible effect on the amount of sugar lost to the molasses. This is why optimized cooling crystallisation is so important. See how it works, click below.

BMA K3080 Installed.

Sucrotech commissions the first of Four continuous   ..machines installed this off-crop

The latest BMA K3080 continuous centrifugal installed at UCL is undergoing commissioning currently. This machine, on ‘C’ product, is the second of its type at Dalton the first being installed on ‘B’ product for the previous seasons.

These machines are taking over from the old K1100 machines which were installed when the mill was upgraded in 1994.

The new K3080 has almost two and a half times the capacity throughput than the old machine on ‘C’ product and almost three times on ‘B’ product. When comparing it to the older K850’s those figures can be doubled again.

The K3080 with its increased throughput capacity is the best size for size continuous centrifugal that has the shortest payback period at a current sugar price and can be utilised on low grade massecuites as well as recovery.

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