Industrial Chromatographic Separation - Finnsugar

The history of Finland’s sugar industry begins from 1758 when the first sugar refinery was built in Turku which was Finland’s capital up to 1812. In 1918 six small sugar refineries were merged, and the company Finnsugar (Suomen Sokeri Oy) was established.

During the 1960’s Finnsugar changed its strategy from being only a sugar producer to being also an innovator. In 1965 Finnsugar closed its major old plant in the centre of Helsinki and opened a modern refinery and R&D centre located in Porkkala about 50 km west of Helsinki.

To increase its competitiveness in the world’s sugar market Finnsugar started to focus its R&D work on speciality ingredients available from the various sugar and sugar derivate products. Ion Exchange Resins were commercialized in the 1950’s and Finnsugar’s scientists started to use these new ion exchange materials for chromatographic separation of different ingredients.

Finnsugar’s Industrial Applications

After a long-term R&D work Finnsugar started the industrial glucose/fructose separation in 1968. The new technology was very successful and in early 1970’s Finnsugar produced over 50 % of the world’s crystalline fructose.

Based on industrial chromatography Finnsugar developed other industrial processes, for example, the technology for recovering saccharose from molasses, separation of xylose from wood molasses and separation of different amino acids from beet molasses.

Industrial Chromatographic Separation

 This technology has three major parts:

• Hardware (columns, pumps, fittings etc.)
• Software (process know-how)
• Stationary phase (tailor-made ion exchange resins)

During the 1970’s commercially available ion exchange resins were designed for water treatment applications. These resins were, however, unsuitable for chromatographic separation. Because the stationary phase is the heart of good separation performance, Finnsugar decided to start the production of these resins by itself in order to guarantee their availability as well as the possibility for tailoring them for the above mentioned applications.

R&D resin work started in the middle of the 1970’s at the R&D centre of Porkkala. A new resin plant was planned and built three years later in 1979 in Kotka, located on the premises of the former beet sugar plant in Korela. This new resin plant was one of the global pioneers for producing industrial chromatographic resins.

Part of Finnsugar Engineering

The new chromatographic technology developed by Finnsugar received very high commercial interest around the world. Finnsugar established its own organization, Finnsugar Engineering, for selling this technology around the world.

Kotka resin plant became part of Finnsugar Engineering and the close cooperation with Finnsugar Engineering and Finnsugar’s Technology Centre made it possible to develop and tailor special resins for different applications.

In 1984 the chromatographic resins made at the Kotka resin plant were named Finex resins.

During the 1980’s Finnsugar Engineering sold many industrial separation plants to Europe, North America and Asia, each of them had specially designed Finex resins.

Korela Plant in Kotka 1953 -1990

Korela plant formerly operated as a beet sugar factory between 1953-1969 when it was closed. During the next five years the site was empty. Then in 1974 Finnsugar started potato starch production at this location, later, they also started to produce liquid sugar, resins, cattle feed and biomass at the same site. By 1990 there were as many as 150 people working at the site.

During 1990 Finnsugar streamlined the whole corporation, one of the side-effects was the decision towards closing down the Korela plant. The potato starch business was sold to its Finnish competitor, the liquid sugar plant was merged to Finnsugar’s plant in Jokioinen and the cattle feed and biomass production was closed due to being considered uneconomical. Finnsugar also decided to close down the resin plant, because the infrastructure was judged as too much just for small resin production.

Big Change in 1990

The closing down decision opened new opportunities for the resin plant’s staff to pursue.

After long and positive negotiations between the staff and Finnsugar’s executives, the activities of the resin plant, including the brand name Finex, were sold over to the staff.

For the sake of good order and to keep things simple, the new company was named as Finex Oy - a new company was born!