Natural cane sugar, high quality sulphurless sugar, low glycaemic index sugar and fortified sugars are going to be the few future products from the Indian Sugar Industry. In addition to it, brown sugar, liquid sugar, pharmaceutical sugar and flavoured sugar may see a spurt in the market demand.
Amidst many controversies relating sugar with health, the Indian Sugar Industry has to adopt a forward-looking approach to produce sugars as per changing consumer behaviour, domestic sector specific requirements and overseas market demand as well. We have to change the product profile to deliver a better sweetener having nutritive value to the common consumers at affordable prices. Side by side, when about 60% of the total sugar is consumed by the bulk consumers, sugar of different qualities as required for different end usage are to be produced, said Prof. Narendra Mohan, Former Director, National Sugar Institute.
Factors such as increased income levels, urbanization, sedentary lifestyle and changes in dietary preferences with increased demand for ready-to-eat convenient goods are expected to boost demand for such speciality sugars. Increasing consumption of bakery, confectionery and beverage products is expected to provide growth opportunity for the sales of such sugars in the food & beverage industry. Robust growth of the bakery, confectionery and beverage industry across the globe is likely to accelerate the sales volume of specialty sugars over the coming years, and its market value is projected to expand at a CAGR of around 7% through 2031.
We have to keep on innovating techno-economical processes to produce such sugars at low cost with minimum use of chemicals. To me, we have to work on two stage process, firstly producing “Natural Cane Sugar” using only limited quantity of lime as clarifying agent, partly for consumption by common consumers and purifying part of it to produce high quality sulphurless sugar for use by bulk consumers or other specialty sugars, said Prof. Mohan.
When we do have distilleries integrated with the sugar factories, it is the high time to utilize the carbon di-oxide released from the distillery fermenters as clarification aid for purifying sugar melt in such sugar refineries resulting in production of desired quality of sugars at lower cost besides reducing carbon emissions. Successful trials on sugarcane juice clarification have already been conducted and process has been patented, said Prof. Mohan.
