Since the establishment of factory in 1966, various pieces of land in different locations have been acquired and sugar beet has been cultivated in those lands as raw material for the factory. The excess requirement of sugar beet is sourced from farmers in different areas such as Eqlid, Qaderabad, Saadatshahr, Abadeh, Kermanshah, Azerbaijan, Khuzestan, Kazerun, Darab, etc.
During recent years, company’s experts have raised farmer’s awareness, resolve their issues and increased cultivation productivity per hectare. Factor has played its role to support the farmers by supplying seeds, fertilizers and pesticides as well as assistance in the form of equipment for mechanized harvest of the produce.
More than 140 hectares of land around the factory have been allocated to cultivation of fruit trees like walnut, almond and apple and also damask rose has been planted on 20 hectares of land.
Products from these orchards are offered in highest quality to customers around the country. Given the problems in supply of water within the region, company has tried its best to utilize modern technologies like dripping to water all the orchards.
In recent years, due to the availability of animal feed required for breeding light livestock, the factory has launched a livestock farm with a capacity of 600 sheep, whose dairy and protein products are provided to staff and customers.
Since 2011 and ostrich farming unit has been developed on a part of a land owned by the factory with approximate area of 10 hectares. This unit started by farming 20 ostriches and ultimately at present 600 ostriches are farmed in this unit and the products are offered to the market.
This unit also incubates ostrich eggs and offers the chicks to customers who want to do ostrich farming.
Eqlid Sugar Factory’s main field of activity is to extract sugar from sugar beet which is carried out in various following stages by using the lime method:
Due to limitation of sugar beet production and cultivation during two seasons of spring and autumn, Eqlid Sugar Factory also refines raw sugar imported from other countries and by removing impurities and color pigments in raw sugar and reheating and crystallization it, produces raw sugar. Presently the factory refines 950 tons of raw sugar and produces white sugar from it.
Due to great need of lime at different stages of sugar refining, at the beginning of operations, the required lime was purchased from mines in vicinity and over time the license was acquired by the company to utilize Chenar Gardaneh Lime Mine. At present the mine procures the needs of the factory and the surplus production is offered to customers. This mine in 40 Km of city of Eqlid with capacity of few ten million tons will be sufficient to supply the needs the factory for many years.
Company sells variety of its products to customers. High quality products such as white sugar, molasses and beet pulp are offered to customers. import of raw sugar, seeds and the required pesticides are amongst the other activities of Eqlid Sugar Co’s Commercial Department.