Egypt's Al Nouran sugar production facility, a 2.5 billion Egyptian pound ($357 million) project, will begin operations in the last quarter of 2016, the firm's chairman and chief executive officer Ashraf Mahmoud told Reuters on Sunday. "In the last quarter 2016 we start refining, first quarter of 2017 we start producing," Mahmoud said at the Kingsman Platts Dubai Sugar conference.
The facility in Sharkiya province is expected to have an annual output of 250,000 tonnes using beet and then refine raw sugar when beet is not in season. Its refining capacity is 300,000 tonnes, Mahmoud said. The beet season in Egypt runs from the end of January to May or mid-June. The North African country, which depends on the Nile for almost all its water, is trying to expand sugar beet planting as it consumes less water than cane. Beet is mostly grown in the Nile Delta region while cane sugar is grown in southern Egypt. Al Nouran also hopes to start ethanol production from the new plant and to export around 100,000 tons of sugar after covering domestic demand.