2025-08-05
Did you know that Europe's largest sugar terminal is in Antwerp? Jeroen Mertens, terminal manager at Euroports, explains the journey sugar takes from Belgium’s sugar beet fields, through the port, and into kitchens worldwide.
Are you familiar with the ‘sugar banana’? This is the name for a fertile agricultural belt that stretches from southern France to Poland. This area, which includes Belgium, is home to European sugar beet cultivation. Sugar producers purchase the beets and process them into white sugar in their factories.
From there, the sugar leaves for the port. If the sugar arrives in a truck, it is usually a tanker truck. This truck can tilt, using gravity to unload the sugar at the terminal.
Most of the sugar arrives at the terminal in bulk trains. That means the sugar is loose in the cargo space or container. They are, however, lined with a protective liner.
We are ideally located within the 'sugar banana'.
"Everything has to be highly hygienic because it concerns food products," Jeroen explains. "We unload the sugar in a closed plant.
Sometimes metal shavings end up in the sugar during the production or transport process. That is why the sugar passes through a sieve and a high-precision metal detector. It even removes metal shavings smaller than a millimetre. The sugar is then stored in warehouses.”
"We can store up to 220 000 tons of sugar in temperature-controlled warehouses," says Jeroen. Food safety is very important. Every day, employees test the metal detectors with tiny pieces of metal. They also continuously clean the installations to prevent the accumulation of sugar dust. "Because sugar dust is explosive," explains Jeroen. This is why ATEX certification is mandatory for our terminal. That means all equipment and structures here are made with materials that don't spark."
Euroports packs the sugar in 50-kilogram bags or in large bags weighing 1 to 1.2 tonnes. Every second, a 50-kilogram bag rolls off the belt. The bags are then carefully stacked in containers for transport to destinations around the world.
"We export from Antwerp to all over the world. Every year, multiple ships depart for the Middle East or West Africa," Jeroen explains. "A great deal of the sugar goes to the Benelux, where it travels by truck."
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