China’s population of more than 1.4 billion consumed 16.2 million tonnes of sugar in 2020. The country’s urbanisation has changed the younger generation’s eating habits, including a rapid rise in sugar consumption. For 2030 this is forecast to grow even further to 18.6m tonnes. The new Dafeng Yinmore Sugar refinery built together with BMA plays an important part in meeting this demand.

Over the past ten years, BMA has successfully commissioned more than 200 centrifugals in Ukraine. At the Podillya Foods Company and the Gorodishche-Pustovarovsky sugar factory, we have installed the new generation of control systems featuring smart.monitoring. This monitoring service lets factories access live operating data from E1810 batch centrifugals, at any time and from anywhere.

At the end of last year, BMA successfully commissioned a mini sugar refinery at San Diego, California, for California Sugar Equipment LLC (Zucarmex Group). Because of the pandemic, BMA was unable to be at the construction site at all times. But with our remote solution, we were able to provide customer support.

BMA has been working on its digitalisation strategy smart4sugar for a digitally networked sugar factory since 2018. The aim is to make machine and production data available at any time and from anywhere in the world, tapping unused potential and increasing a factory’s efficiency. Our approach has been to develop a proprietary hardware, as an interface to the Microsoft Azure cloud.

As a global company, BMA relies on the support of its international teams. To foster close collaboration, the whole Sales team normally meets once a year for a conference lasting several days. Last year, the focus was once again on networking – though of a different type.

The corona crisis presents a challenge for corporate communications, too. But digital communication is bringing people worldwide closer together, despite the pandemic and geographical distance.

In the sugar industry, knowledge transfer is the key to greater efficiency. The Academy is now offering its training solutions online as well. This allows us to make our knowledge available to everybody, so machinery and plants can be operated efficiently and safely.