Nordzucker Post 3/2025 - 2 September 2025
Focus on modernisation, efficiency improvements and decarbonisation – our factories are ready for the sugar beet campaign
The maintenance teams at Nordzucker’s sites have made intensive use of the time since the end of the last campaign, and our sugar factories are ready to go for the 2025/2026 campaign. Alexander Godow, Chief Operating Officer at Nordzucker, explains how the maintenance measures and associated investments are strategically organised: “Our investments in the factories follow a clear plan: we are increasing energy efficiency, modernising, automating and digitising our infrastructure, and consistently focusing on decarbonising our production. In this way, we are ensuring a stable campaign and making our factories fit for the future.”
Targeted modernisation
In several sugar factories, central facilities such as beet washers and sugar houses have been renovated, and the existing infrastructure has been further adapted to new regulatory requirements. While a new tare house has been in use in Örtofta, Sweden, since the last campaign, examining incoming beets with state-of-the-art technology, a decanter at the Clauen site ensures that organic turbidity is filtered out before filtration, ensuring a more stable processing performance until the end of the campaign. In Nordstemmen, the second stage of vapour compression will be put into operation at the start of the campaign. This involves compressors compressing the water vapour produced during the evaporation of sugar juice – known as vapour – and reusing it as heating steam. This ensures even greater energy efficiency in production and reduces CO₂ emissions. In November 2025, combined liquid sugar production will also go into operation there – a further step towards efficiency and excellence.
Cooperation and synergies across sites and countries
As part of a cross-network project, old centrifuges at the Porkkala factory in Finland were replaced with more modern, efficient equipment. This equipment came from the former factory in Arlöv, Sweden, and was refurbished and installed by a team from Säkylä, Finland: a good example of cross-location cooperation and sustainable use of resources. The new centrifuges are more efficient and easier to maintain. The continued use of equipment from other sites has a long tradition at Nordzucker and contributes to the sustainable use of existing machinery and equipment.
Decarbonisation of production firmly in sight
Nordzucker is also reaching important milestones in decarbonisation: in Denmark, biogas from its own beet pulp will be used for the first time in the coming campaign. The pulp is delivered to a nearby biogas plant, which in return provides the factories with biomethane for production. Nordzucker is thus gradually replacing fossil natural gas and significantly reducing the carbon footprint of its sites in Nykøbing and Nakskov – an important milestone on the road to CO₂-neutral production at Nordzucker by 2050 at the latest. “We are also pushing ahead with the decarbonisation of our production in Poland – with the start of the coming campaign, we will be the first sugar producer in the country to have completely switched to gas as our primary energy source,” Alexander Godow concludes.
