Dow Jones
October 31
he Uzbek-U.S. joint venture Sugar Investment Ltd. has developed a $1.5-million production line to produce refined sugar from sugar cane at its Khorezm sugar refinery, the largest refinery in Central Asia, the Uzbek national food processing association Uzpishcheprom said Wednesday.
The joint venture has purchased 90,000 metric tons of Brazilian sugar cane, which has been delivered to the refinery for processing during the remainder of this year.
Next year the joint venture will purchase 260,000 tons of sugar cane on the world market and produce 250,000 tons of refined sugar for domestic consumption.
Uzbekistan's annual refined sugar requirement is 630,000 tons.
Apart from the production line, Sugar Investment Ltd. has also constructed a warehouse for sugar cane and a system of conveyor belts and pipelines.
The existing production line to produce refined sugar from domestically grown sugar beet continues operating at the same time as the new production line. Originally it was expected to provide a large part of the country's sugar requirement, but poor sugar beet harvests made it impossible for the refinery to work to capacity.
In the 1999-2000 season only 10,000 tons of refined sugar was produced from 94,000 tons of sugar beet. This year the harvest is even worse at 50,000 tons.