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4. Products, Processing and Impact on
Supply Chain
Mallee, in whatever form an industry finally takes, will be a biomass production industry, and the
potential for the industry to be viable will be dependent on minimising costs and maximising the value
which can be extracted from the raw material harvested. From these viewpoints, the crop can be
compared and contrasted with Sugarcane.
This chapter will first overview products from and processing of sugarcane, how this has evolved in
response to the reduction in the relative profitability of sugar, as the primary product, over time. The
range of products which can be produced from Mallee will then be discussed, the impact of large scale
production on potential product value will be assessed and supply chain implications evaluated.
4.1 Product Options and Supply Chain Implications: Sugarcane.
4.1.1 Product options
Over the past three decades, paradigm shifts have occurred in sugar industries around the world. The
primary product of sugar industries around the world has traditionally been crystal sugar. Electricity
production was primarily for internal consumption at the sugar mill (Hobson, 2003) and environs,
with export levels optimised to limit the cyclic draw on the electricity grid during start-up of high load
current operations, such as sugar centrifuging.
Key issues relating to the traditional sugar mill configuration include:
• To maximise economic benefit, sucrose recovery has traditionally been maximised.
• Because of the limited economic benefit (low price, limited market) traditionally gained from
electricity generation, this was limited to the amount required to operate the factory. Some
optimisation of generation capacity was based on factory internal peak loads and the relative
cost of imported and exported power. Factories which were not connected to grid power had
to have sufficient installed generation capacity to operate in “stand-alone” mode.
• Some “value adding” of the molasses was undertaken by the production of potable or
industrial alcohol either at a mill based facility or at stand-alone facilities.
• Bagasse was typically a disposal issue, so the boilers were designed to absorb the near
maximum bagasse flow rates. Overall thermal efficiency of a sugar factory, including the
internal process thermal requirement was typically in the order of less than 20% (Lavarack,
2004). In some countries “bagasse furnaces” were utilised in sugarmills to dispose of excess
bagasse.
The most significant first challenge to this paradigm was the “Proalcohol” program in Brazil. The
fundamental changes (Wright et.al. 2007) in this, relative to the traditional strategy included:
• Whilst the overall concept was to produce ethanol, R&D indicated that there were substantial
benefits in a strategy of production of both sugar and ethanol in a combined process, as
significant bio-chemical synergies were present as the two processes were integrated.
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