Magyar Cukor builds silo using brand new method

On 19 November the new sugar silo of Magyar Cukor Zrt.’s Kaposvár factory was ceremonially inaugurated. The state-of-the-art new sugar silo has a 60,000-ton storage capacity and was realised from HUF 3 billion. It took 11 months to build the futuristic-looking, hemisphere-shaped sugar silo and the surrounding buildings. Thin shell concrete building technology was used for the first time in Hungary: the silo was constructed without using any scaffolding or shuttering, simply a PVC form was inflated and kept at 5 millibar pressure, and various layers (insulation, steel, concrete, plastic, etc.) were applied from within this giant ‘balloon’. Wall thickness varies between 300mm and 200mm and a 650m long air conditioning channel was built into the floor of the silo. Sugar enters through the roof of the silo and exits via an underground conveyor belt. In 2014 Magyar Cukor Zrt. plans to invest HUF 5 billion in building a new packaging plant and storage facility. After the abolition of the sugar production quotas in 2017 the Kaposvár factory will produce 150,000-180,000 tons of sugar from Hungarian beet. Beet is supplied by 280 farmers who grow it on 15,000-18,000 hectares of land.