GUWAHATI: Assam has established India’s first boilerless sugarcane processing plant at Bamungaon near Lanka in Hojai district. The facility, developed by Punjab-based Spray Engineering Devices Limited (SEDL) in collaboration with Ecotech Agro Mills, marks a shift from conventional processing methods.
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The plant, with a crushing capacity of 500 tonnes per day (TCD), eliminates the need for burning bagasse to power boilers. Instead, it processes sugarcane into jaggery using a completely fuel-free system.
The process involving this new method of jaggery production involves recycling all recovered water for irrigating nearby organic sugarcane fields, while solar power integration contributes to reducing the plant’s environmental footprint. Since commissioning, the unit has processed over 1.8 lakh tonnes of sugarcane annually, avoiding the use of approximately 60,000 tonnes of bagasse.
Plans are underway to increase the plant's capacity to 750 TCD, while cultivation across 800 bighas of farmland is being undertaken to ensure a consistent supply of cane.
Notably, Assam has over 29,000 hectares under sugarcane cultivation, with a potential jaggery output of 1.35 lakh tonnes per year. The state, however, has always lacked sufficient processing infrastructure and relies heavily on imports.
