Told by Meret Ottiger and Andrin Lustgarten Two food science Bsc ETH students who completed their production internship at laflor at the end of February
In October 2022, the laflor production team took a trip to the only sugar factory in Switzerland located in Frauenfeld in the canton of Thurgau. Dressed in safety vests, we set off on the tour. There are only three farms in Switzerland that still produce organic sugar beets. For us at laflor, this was one of the reasons for choosing this sugar. In addition, the journey from Frauenfeld to Zurich is reasonably short. The ripe sugar beet is harvested once a year and brought to Frauenfeld. Now the machines in the sugar factory are running at full speed for the next three months.
At the beginning of our tour, we saw how the farmers delivered and unloaded their sugar beets. As the freshly harvested sugar beets are still full of soil, the first step in this complex process is to wash them thoroughly. The soil that is washed out is valuable and is processed into nutrient-rich plant soil.
Machines crush the cleaned beets and the sugar is extracted with hot water. This produces dark raw sugar juice. The juice is then centrifuged with milk of lime and carbon dioxide. This mixture consists of water and 16 percent sugar. Further water is extracted from this liquid until a sugar content of 65% is reached. The water content of this thick juice is further reduced using a vacuum until sugar crystals form. Centrifugation then separates the sugar crystals from the syrup. This syrup undergoes a new crystallization process. During the final step, the raw sugar is dissolved again, filtered and crystallized. The result is white granulated sugar, which we then use in our chocolate manufactory.
It was very impressive to see the entire production process, from the unwashed sugar beet to the bulging bags of sugar. We particularly remember the short time window (mid-October to the beginning of December) in which the white Swiss organic sugar is produced. During the rest of the year, the machines are cleaned and maintained so that they are ready for the next sugar beet harvest. All by-products from sugar production are processed without compromise and returned to the agricultural cycle.
