26 August 2024
New extraction tower at the Nordzucker factory in Uelzen: an important contribution to decarbonisation
Nordzucker celebrated the completion of a new extraction tower at its Uelzen factory today. Sugar is extracted from the cells of the sugar beet during sugar extraction. The new tower will go into operation in September, just in time for the campaign start. With the additional extraction tower, Nordzucker is increasing the efficiency of sugar extraction and at the same time saving around 10,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year at the Uelzen factory. This is an important contribution to decarbonisation and supports the company’s sustainability goals: halving the carbon footprint by 2030 compared to 2018 and achieving carbon-neutral production by 2050 at the latest.
After six months of planning and 17 months of construction, Nordzucker inaugurated the extraction tower in Uelzen today. Alexander Godow, Chief Operating Officer at Nordzucker, is convinced of the new plant and the resulting increase in energy efficiency: “With the new extraction tower in Uelzen, we are starting at the very beginning of the production process and are already saving a lot of energy in this step of sugar extraction. We are constantly optimising our production processes across the Group and are thus moving emphatically towards decarbonisation and sustainability.“
As part of its GoGreen sustainability programme, the company plans to invest a total of around 300 million Euro in the decarbonisation of its production sites over the next five years, thereby reducing the sugar’s carbon footprint. The extraction tower in Uelzen is an important milestone in this process. “I am very impressed by how quickly we were able to realise this construction project and how the tower is already going into operation with the upcoming campaign. I would like to thank everyone involved for their commitment. This shows how seriously we take our sustainability goals and how ambitiously we are driving them forward,“ emphasised Alexander Godow at today’s inauguration in Uelzen.
“The newly erected extraction tower here in Uelzen is already an impressive sight. It not only gives our factory another modern plant, but also makes the site more efficient and fitter for the future,“ says Runi Egholm, Head of the Uelzen factory. With a height of around 40 metres and a diameter of around 12 metres, the new extraction tower can process up to 11,200 tonnes of beet pulp per day during the campaign – the entire factory can process over 20,000 tonnes. The extraction tower plays a key role in the sugar extraction process: the sugar beet, which is cut into fine strips, is heated and fed from the bottom to the top of the tower. In this process, the sugar is extracted from the beet pulp using water heated to around 60 degrees Celsius. Lothar Steinmann, Head of Operations & Projects at Nordzucker in Uelzen, is in charge of the project and explains: “The beet pulp remains in this extraction tower for more than twice as long as in our other towers. This means we can extract the sugar more efficiently, use less water and therefore reduce our energy requirements enormously.“