TABER, Alta. — Plans to diversify Alberta’s sugar beet industry by producing glycol from the crop were slowed this year, partly because of the high cost of research.
Alberta Sugar Beet Growers president Rob Boras told a Feb. 18 meeting that the business plan must be re-evaluated.
“With our limited resources and the direction that the producers want us to go in, we’ve got to step back and re-evaluate,” Boras said in an interview after his presentation to growers. “It takes an excessive amount of funds to take the industry in a different direction, diversification especially.”
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Last year, growers were told about a process in which beets could be used as feedstock to produce glycol, an ingredient in liquid detergents, antifreeze and plastic bottles.
The beet growers association was working with Vancouver-based S2G BioChem on research into the possibilities.
This year, Boras said the group continues to work with a consultant, but funding is an issue.
“The writing is on the wall. We have to diversify and it’s not from lack of trying,” he said. “It’s more from the lack of funding. So we’ll re-evaluate and see if we can continue in that direction. If not, so be it.”
In his report to the growers, Boras said the pursuit of diversification options proved to be a major task.
“While it is still a very worthwhile goal to pursue, what we are finding is that new and emerging technologies are in their infancy and not yet ready to be commercialized.
“We are not quitting, but rather becoming more pragmatic in our options.”
Alberta sugar beet growers are interested in diversifying uses for their product because they have only one buyer, Lantic Sugar, which operates the only sugar factory in Alberta at Taber.
Negotiations on a new contract between growers and Lantic were scheduled to begin Feb. 20.
As usual, there are worries about potential factory closure, although there are no indications of that at present.
Alberta growers produce about nine percent of Canadian domestic sugar needs.
Gerald Third, executive director of the sugar beet association, said the country’s ability to produce some of its own sugar is under threat given provisions in international trade agreements that allow processors to import raw sugar, process it and then market it as Canadian.
In his report to growers, Third referenced remarks from past association presidents, among them Phil Baker in 1950.
Third quoted Baker as saying, “surely no one would be foolish enough to suggest that any part of this production should be imported from foreign countries.”
Yet it is now happening, said Third.
“Here we are, 50 years later, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
