26 July 2024
Nordzucker celebrates the topping-out ceremony for the new sugar silo at the Nordstemmen site: Reducing transport – saving CO₂
“Supplying our customers reliably and sustainably with regionally produced sugar is a very important goal for us. Thanks to the new silo in Nordstemmen, we avoid external interim storage and reduce truck transports. In this way, we are gradually improving our ecological footprint by reducing truck transports. The shorter distances to our customers also allow us to further reduce the CO₂ footprint of our sugar and protect the environment. The investment in the new silo in Nordstemmen is just one building block in our plants in Lower Saxony on the way to climate-neutral sugar production,” explains Executive Board member Alexander Godow, Chief Operating Officer at Nordzucker.
Nordzucker is building one of the largest sugar silos in Germany with a new storage capacity of 80,000 tonnes, which corresponds to around 3,200 truckloads. “The construction will give us significantly more storage space for sugar on site,” says Elmar Kuhnt, Head of Sugar Factory Nordstemmen. “We have to transport less sugar to other silos, can store more sugar on site and thus save not only time and storage costs, but also transports.”
The new building at the Nordstemmen site will be able to store 80,000 tonnes of sugar. Around 560,000 tonnes of sugar beet will be processed for this amount of sugar in just over a month’s campaign. The height of the silo, including the silo roof with the feeder, is around 53 metres, making it only slightly higher than the other silos. This means that the new silo fits in well with the factory image. The round silo wall with a thickness of around 70 centimetres – including the shell, insulation and heating system – spans an internal diameter of 56 metres. A total of over 8,000 cubic metres of concrete were poured into the wall and floor. Around 1,000 trucks had to drive to the construction site to deliver this amount of concrete.
At the Nordstemmen plant, the construction of the new silo with its positive effects is embedded in various measures, in particular to improve energy efficiency. Following the inauguration of a new fluorine gas-free energy distribution system last year together with Lower Saxony’s Economics Minister Olaf Lies, further projects are on the agenda. These include vapour recompression and two new evaporators to further increase energy efficiency. “Saving energy is an important step towards sustainability at Nordzucker. All sites are involved in this process. The 80,000 tonnes silo at the Nordstemmen plant will certainly make its contribution,” summarises Elmar Kuhnt.