Sangeet Singla, Director (S&VO), DFPD during the 3rd edition of the Sugar and Ethanol India Conference (SEIC 2024) held in Delhi, discussed the innovations required in the sugar sector that the industry can work upon as it will improve the efficiency of the sector and further help it to grow not only as “annadata” but also as “urjadata.”
He said, “One area where this whole sector needs to focus is cane development. I think it is high time that the sugar sector needs to work on sugarcane. We should not expect a few sugarcane research institutes or some government institutions only to work in this direction. The country needs drought-resistant varieties, better yield, pest-resistant varieties, and all. I think industry-based or sponsored research is the need of the hour. We know that ISMA has concluded one MoU with the sugarcane breeding institute Coimbatore, but one agreement or contract will not work. It needs to be for the long run and multi-pronged. I suggest industry associations and as well as major groups, they need to keep aside some of their capital for R&D work and invest in R&D for the interest of the sector.”
He also emphasized on packaging innovations. Singla said, “Another point I want to highlight is packaging innovations. I know this year the sugar sector is complying with 20% jute bags. But this is one area where we can think of not only meeting the packaging requirements of the sugar sector but also giving packaging solutions to the whole country. All of us know that the Honorable Prime Minister has given multiple times this request, appeal to the whole citizens of this country to avoid plastic, and the sugar sector has the solution. If we all work together, we can find bioplastic; we can become the world leader of bioplastic, and then you need not buy HDPE, LDPE bags from the market; rather, you can be a supplier for the whole world. So you can think when we can make ethanol, we can use or upgrade the technology to make some packaging solutions not only for the sugar sector but also for the global sector.”
“Here, as a newcomer to this sector, I could never understand except for the retail consumer, who is just one-third of the consumer of the total sugar production of the country, two-thirds of the sugar is going to institutional buyers, and none of them is using crystallized sugar. So sugar mills are investing or utilizing energy to crystallize the sugar syrup, and then your buyer is again utilizing energy to decrystallize and convert it into syrup. So can we think of investing some of our research efforts in seeing whether it is feasible to utilize sugar syrup itself, and we can think of getting rid of this crystallized sugar; then we will be saving some energy as well as some packaging issues,” he further added.
He urged the industry to adopt digitization in the sector. He said that one more request I would say if we can think in that direction. Then as usual, I have emphasized since the last two years on the digitization of the whole ecosystem. Sugar mills need to digitize their operations. This is one area where I don’t think we have gone much ahead in AI-based solutions, so the sector can work on AI-based solutions and then find out how we can use AI not only in operation but also in trading because most, many of you are traders here. So we can think of algorithm-based trading in the sugar sector or something like that. I am not an expert in sugar trading so I cannot comment on that but I think the whole environment needs to be digitized. This is one area where there are ample opportunities to work.
“Then another area is value-added products. As we know sugar is a cyclic commodity. In five years we are surplus, two years we are deficit. So if we have value-added products, those five years we will not be facing the glut of sugar. Ethanol is already there to support that. But beyond ethanol also, we can have these value-added products. The whole world is moving towards that. And instead of just selling plain sugar, we can have value-added sugar which will fetch better prices and better margins which will ultimately benefit farmers as well as sugar millers,” he concluded.
