ATO meets with world’s largest organic sugar supplier

On April 28, the U.S. General Consul in São Paulo, Ricardo Zuniga, visited Ribeirão Preto to visit Agrishow, an international fair of agricultural technology, in which there were several U. S. companies as participants. Following Agrishow, the Agricultural Trade Office (ATO) and Consul General Zuniga met with officials from Balbo Usina São Francisco in Sertãozinho, São Paulo. The Balbo family mills are undisputed leaders in the production of organic sugar in Brazil and the world, supplying more than 30 percent of global organic sugar. They crush over 6.4 million metric tons of sugarcane per year to produce 385 million liters of ethanol and 280,000 metric tons of sugar. The group also co-generates 235,000 MW of electric energy from cane residue (bagasse). Brazil is the world’s largest producer and consumer of fuel ethanol after the United States and the world’s largest producer and exporter of sugar. From the total processed per year, approximately 57 percent of that throughput is dedicated to ethanol production and the remainder to sugar. Electric co-generation from the burning of bagasse is an increasingly important activity for these mills as well.