SUGAR BEET

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 30, 30 June 1939, Page 7

SUGAR BEET

A MODERN INDUSTRY -X2REAT PROGRESS IN BRITAIN Among the successes of recent 3'ears the growing of sugar beet should most certainly have a placc. No one in 1924 could have forecast "that within a few years this product would have expanded into a financially successful industry. At first commercial production was held up because farmers, would not produce large quantities of sugar beet when there was only one factory in England able to deal with it; and on Ihe other hand factories could not lie built until sufficient beet was to warrant the heavy expenditure involved. This trouble was not overcome until the British Government subsidised the new industry > "W but since that time it has made great strides. BY-PRODUCTS VALUE. Tn the British Isles this product of soil, valued for its high .sugar -content, is sown in April or .May and harvested before the first frosts come The extraction of sugar is accom. jplished in the factories by placing Jars, cylindrical in shape, in a circle. *'"• These are connected by pipes along which flows water that circulates round shredded beet, and the diffus'ion juice gathers in the outlet pipe of the last jar. It is first chargcd with sucrose and drawn off: then treated, and finally crys., .tallised as sugar. The pulp that is discharged is made "Into three by-products: Beet gulp, for either moist or dr>y fodder; filter press cakes, sometimes used as fertiliser; and molasses, used in the pi'o. rduction of alcohol for chemical or iother purposes.