Cane Preparation
The sugar cane is delivered by road to the Malelane and Komati mills after in-field loading. At the mills, the cane is weighed and then off-loaded directly into the production stream. First the cane moves through the cane preparation area where large cane knives cut the cane into pieces which are then fed into a shredder that converts the cane sticks into a finely chopped fibre, hereby exposing the sweet sucrose bearing cells.

Juice Extraction
From here the chopped fibre moves through a diffuser. A diffuser is a large vessel where hot water is sprayed onto the moving bed of chopped cane and the sucrose is leached out of the cane (like a teabag in a cup of tea!).

After passing through the diffuser, the remaining sucrose bearing moisture is extracted from the chopped cane through a milling process where the cane passes through heavy rollers that squeeze out the remaining juice from the fibre.

The fibre discharged from the mill is called bagasse and is the main source of fuel for boilers that produce the steam and electricity required by the sugar production process. Tsb Sugar also uses the excess bagasse for the production of animal feeds (Molatek) and exports bagasse to ultraboard for the production of fibreboard used in the furniture industry.
 
Clarification & Evaporation
After extraction, mixed juice consisting of water, sucrose and a few other impurities, is heated and milk of lime is added to neutralise the acids which then form a precipitate that is settled out in the clarifiers. This sediment is filtered to recover any remaining sucrose.

The clarified juice is pumped to the evaporators, a series of vessels arranged so that each one has a greater vacuum than the preceding one. During the process the excess water is removed and the juice solids are concentrated.

Crystallisation
During the next stage, crystallisation is achieved by further evaporating the water in large vacuum pans. When the water has evaporated, the sugar reaches concentrated levels. Seed crystals are added and they act as nuclei that grow into larger sugar crystals. This crystal mixture and the surrounding mother liquor is known as massecuite. From the vacuum pans the mother liquor passes through crystallisers, additional sugar is exhausted from the mother liquor and deposited onto the crystals.

Raw Sugar
The sugar crystals now have to be separated from the mother liquor. The mixture is fed into centrifuges, where a rotating perforated basket spins at high speed spinning out the mother liquor, which is now called molasses. The raw sugar crystals are retained in the basket. The raw sugar now passes though a drier before being dispatched to the sugar bin (Komati Mill) or the refinery (Malelane Mill). The molasses are also used by Tsb Sugar's animal feed plant (Molatek) at the Malelane Mill. The raw sugar from the Komati Mill is transported to the refinery at the Malelane Mill for further processing.
 
Refining
At the refinery, the light brown coloured raw sugar is turned into pure white refined sugar through a refining process that entails the re-melting of the raw sugar crystals. The re-melted crystals pass through a de-colourisation process. After re-crystallisation the sugar is colourless.

Packaging
From the refinery the sugar moves either to the sugar silo to Tsb Sugar's packaging operation. Here, the sugar is packaged in commodities ranging from the 5gms Selati tube sachet to one ton bulk bags for the industrial market. In addition to white refined sugar, Tsb Sugar also produces a range of brown sugars including Selati Muscovado and Selati Demarara sugar as well as white Icing Snow sugar and white Castor Snow sugar, which are packaged at the plant.
 
Dispatch
The packaged sugar is housed in huge sugar stores at Malelane from where it is dispatched by road and rail to customers all over South Africa. Tsb Sugar prides itself on the efficiency of its sugar dispatch system, where client satisfaction and timely response are the key words.