Scroll Down To See How The Magic Happens!
Planting the Beets
Beet seed are planted in the Spring and harvested in the Autumn.
Growing the Beets
Beets are planted from a small seed; 1lb of beet seed will plant about an acre.
Defoliating the Beets
The beet harvesters defoliate the leaves from the root, lift it from the ground, and remove excess soil from the root.
Harvesting the Beets
The harvest and processing season is referred to as "the campaign". Harvest often runs 12-24 hours a day for approximately 6 weeks.
Piling the Beets
Beets are brought from the various farms to our receiving locations where the beets are weighed, sampled, unloaded, and placed into storage. In order to insure that the beets retain their sugar content, beets are piled below 55 degrees in order to keep the piles cool, and prevent sugar loss in the beets. Piles can be as large as 20 feet tall by 180 feet wide by several hundred feet long. Beets are later trucked from the piles to the factories for processing.
Washing the Beets
Beets enter into a wet hopper which floats the beets into the factory for a deep cleaning. The beets are washed to rid them of leaves, dirt, mud, or sand before they are fed to the beet slicers.
Cutting the Beets
Sharp knives cut the beets into noodle-like segments called cossettes.
Diffuser
Cossettes are weighed and are fed into the diffusion system to yield the sugar. Sugar is removed from the beets by hot water flushing, or diffusing, the sugar from the beets. After the sugar is removed, the remaining beet pulp is processed to be livestock feed.
Purifier
The sugar and water removed from the beets after another diffuser session is called raw juice. The raw juice moves through various stages of purification and filtration to remove particles, impurities, and any remaining non-sugars.
Boiler
Evaporators are used to concentrate the juice into a dark syrup called thick juice
Crystallization
Thick juice, made up of liquid sugar and molasses, goes through the crystallization process and then the crystal and molasses mixture heads to the centrifuges.
Centrifuge
Centrifuges separate the sugar crystal from the molasses by spinning the sugar against a screen while the molasses spins through the screen.
Drying the Sugar
Sugar is conveyed to the granulator for further drying.
Packaging the Sugar
Sugar is then packaged into individual GW bags ranging in size from 1 pound to 100 pounds or is stored to be sold in bulk.