Egyptian refiner Nile Sugar plans to increase its crushing capacity by over 40 percent next year to help meet strong demand in the country, its chief executive said on Sunday. Egypt produces around 2 million tonnes of sugar a year but needs to import about a third of the 3 million tonnes it uses - a gap Nile Sugar hopes to tap.
"We are undertaking a de-bottlenecking process and plan to up capacity in our crushing line," Nile Sugar chief executive Ali Al Dajani told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the Kingsman Dubai sugar conference. "We process 7,000 tonnes of beet sugar per day and we want to increase that to 10,000 tonnes in the coming year or so," he said.
The company refines Egyptian beet sugar in the crushing season from February to June and imports raw sugar, mostly from Brazil, to refine for the rest of the year. Nile Sugar has a refining capacity of 1,200 tonnes of raw sugar per day. It operated at more than 100 percent capacity in 2011 producing around 305,000 tonnes of sugar.