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The Sucrerie Centrale de Cambrai is a French sugar refinery located in Escaudœuvres (in Department Nord, France). The industrial entity is currently part of the Tereos group that acquired Béghin-Say in 2002.
History
[edit]
The building of the sugar refinery goes back to a project launched in 1872 by the engineer of arts and manufactures Jules Linard. Taking advantage of an economic context of free trade and of a growing demand for sugar from European countries, he decided to create his own business.
Advised by the jurist Léon Estivan, he chose to establish a limited company that would enable him to concentrate enough capital to develop a new industrial process. The innovation lay in the control of the supply of beets. The seventeen râperies that processed the beet were connected to the refinery by over 87 miles of pipes along which the beet juice was pumped to the central factory.[1]
On 14 October 1897, a turbine containing 250 hectolitres of boiling beet juice collapsed on several workers. Eleven of them were hurt, and the overseer died of his injuries.[2]
At the end of the 19th century, the Sucrerie Centrale de Cambrai was considered to be the biggest sugar refinery in the world.[3]
During the First World War, Cambrai was occupied by German forces that plundered the refinery of portable equipment.[4]
In April 1972, the year it merged with Say, the Béghin company launched a takeover bid for the Sucrerie Centrale de Cambrai, that recorded an annual turnover of 69 million French francs. The assets of the company had since 1965 included the sugar refineries of Millet and of Bohain. With 300 employees, the factory produced up to 67,060 tonnes of sugar per day.[5]
Description
[edit]The central factory located in Escaudœuvres is equipped with a juice tower that completes the manufacturing process. The original choice of location was explained by the proximity to the coalfield of Northern France, making coal abundant, as well as a clay-limestone subsoil conducive to massive beet production, and reliable road, rail and waterway infrastructure.
The region had a large labour force in both the agricultural and industrial sectors (textiles, metallurgy, etc.). The sugar refinery contracts for the supply of 250,000 tonnes of beets. In 1873, it processed 64,000 tonnes of beet and produced 1,200 tonnes of sugar daily, launching a new industrial process.
References
[edit]- ^ "Sugar", Johnson's New Universal Cyclopaedia, vol. 4 (New York, 1878), p. 638.
- ^ Cambrésis Un peu d’histoire… une épouvantable catastrophe à la sucrerie, La Voix du Nord, 26 July 2018.
- ^ Une heure une oeuvre : Histoire de la sucrerie d'Escaudoeuvres, Médiathèque d'Agglomération de Cambrai, 14 January 2010.
- ^ The American Sugar Family, The New York Public Library, 1920
- ^ Beghin va lancer une O.P.A. sur la Sucrerie centrale de Cambrai, Le Monde, 27 April 1972