From September to February, we again see the familiar transports of sugar beets along the highways and byways throughout some of Germany’s regions, with lorries delivering the freshly harvested sugar beets to sugar factories.
One such high-tech factory is located in the city of Jülich. This is where Pfeifer & Langen, headquartered in Cologne, produces the white crystals that then go their separate ways. Michael Schaupp, Executive Manager at Pfeifer & Langen GmbH & Co. KG, explains the details of the process in this interview.
sweets processing: Do you sweeten your coffee or tea with sugar?
Michael Schaupp: I always enjoy drinking my tea with our crystal sugar. I personally like my coffee best with milk.
sp: How many tonnes of sugar beets are delivered here by farmers each day?
Schaupp: In Jülich, 20,000-25,000 tons of beets are currently delivered daily. The quantity depends on things like holidays when transport lorries aren’t permitted to drive. We compile a small stock for that.
sp: How much sugar can be produced from that?
Schaupp: The sugar beets have an average sugar content of 17–19 percent. We need around eight sugar beets for 1 kilogramme of sugar. But the sugar content also fluctuates each year depending on the weather, so in this current campaign it’s nine sugar beets for 1 kilogramme of sugar.
sp: What kind of energy is required to obtain one kilogramme of sugar?
Schaupp: There’s a lot of water in sugar beets, but almost none in the finished crystal sugar. The water is extracted during processing, so sugar production requires a lot of energy. Our target is to make sugar production in all of the factories in Europe climate neutral by 2040 at the latest. The sugar factory in Jülich also dispensed with coal combustion in 2021 and has been using natural gas since then. This move significantly improved the factory’s energy efficiency and simultaneously halved its CO2 emissions. Our sugar factory in Könnern (Saxony-Anhalt) has already been completely converted to sustainable biomass energy production. The same method, although not yet completely, has also already been in use at the sugar factory in Euskirchen since this year. In the near future we’re planning to build several natural gas facilities where beet pulp, a byproduct of sugar production, will be used to produce biomethane. The energy contained in the extracted sugar beet pulp will be sufficient in the future for the sugar factories to be self-sufficient for their energy requirements. And we’re also planning to further increase the share of renewable energies.In tandem with the energy transformation, we’re also working on reducing the energy requirements and CO2 emissions. By 2025, we want to halve the CO2 emissions measured since 2019.
sp: What happens with the molasses?
Schaupp: In addition to sugar, we also obtain animal feed from the sugar beets in the form of compressed or dried beet pulp. The molasses, which like the essential carbohydrates (sucrose) is also comprised of additional natural ingredients, is an ideal raw material for a broad clientele from the food products, chemical, pharma and fermentation industries.
sp: How sustainable is your production, and how do you implement this aspect?
Schaupp: The sugar beet is a great example of sustainability. In its growth phase, it produces oxygen and is almost 100% recyclable within the framework of a sustainable circular economy. We obtain sweet sugar from it on the one hand, and as previously mentioned, also animal feed and molasses. The water they contain is reused in the production or in cleaning the supplied beets.The sugar beets are cultivated within a range of around 50 kilometres from our sugar factories. This regional logistics approach from the field to the factory significantly reduces our CO2 footprint. And this year, we started using lorries for this that run on natural gas for the first time. Even the sugar beet fibres have a special use. They are contained in our new paper packaging for the beet sugar that’s been available in the retail sector since this past September.
sp: Are all the sugar beets used in refined sugar production, or what else belongs to the product portfolio aside from refined sugar?
Schaupp: We produce several hundred types of sugar at our production facilities in Europe. Refined sugar is one part of that. Our product range stretches from crystal sugar in the widest variety of granulation sizes and extends to liquid sugar, powdered sugar, caramel sugar syrups, brown candy sugar, jam sugar, colourings, fondants, flavoured sugar and on up to many other functional sugars and decoration mixes. We supply both the retail sector and industrial customers. With our broad product range, we’re always able to provide our industrial customers in particular with a perfectly tailor-made solution, even for special technological challenges.
sp: Who are your main customers?
Schaupp: We have a wide ranging clientele. Our most well-known brands are the “Diamant Zucker” or “Kölner Zucker”, sugar brands sold in the food products retail sector. But our list of customers of many years also includes companies from the food products industry with the segments beverages, dairy, fruits, delicacies, confectionery and baked goods.
Many thanks for the interview and all the best with the new production facility in Jülich.
