REFINED
PRODUCTS
ICUMSA 45
Also called "London White"*
Sugar trading features heavily in futures trading, and many crops are sold years before they are actually grown, sometimes up to three years before the sugar cane is even planted. Brazil refines relatively little of its sugar for export, so newcomers to the market will often find that much Brazilian ICUMSA 45 has already been sold quite some time before it was produced. For this reason, buyers looking to purchase large amounts of sugar, especially of ICUMSA 45, but also lower grade sugar often run into difficulties sourcing a reliable supplier.
According to the Brazilian SGS method of testing, ICUMSA 45 sugar is one of the highest quality sugar available on the market today. A simplistic way of looking at ICUMSA ratings is to say that the more white a sugar is, the more refined it is. ICUMSA 45 sugar is a sparkling white, highly refined sugar, suitable for human consumption and use in a wide range of food applications.
ICUMSA 150
(this includes ICUMSA 100 to ICUMSA 150). Also called Crystal Sugar.
ICUMSA 150 sugar is refined white sugar. Not quite as refined as ICUMSA 45 sugar, ICUMSA 150 sugar is still food grade and is often used by manufacturers making foodstuffs where the refining requirements for sugar are lower than those required for sugar sold direct to consumers. ICUMSA 150 sugar is in fact relatively highly refined sugar, especially when one considers that higher ICUMSA rated sugars are available, up to ICUMSA 4600 or more, but due to high levels of contamination and bacteria, these are not suitable for human consumption. ICUMSA ( International Commission For Uniform Methods Of Sugar Analysis) Ratings are ratings standardized by the aforementioned international body which reflect how refined sugar is, and thereby allow sugar to be traded across international borders with surety
Applications
It is a highly versatile product and may be employed in several applications, from domestic to industrial processes. Some of the several uses are: preparation of foods in general, soda, juice and sweetened beverage industries, brewery, baking, fondants, food industries, etc.
ICUMSA
About Icumsa
ICUMSA (International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis) is a world-wide body which brings together the activities of the National Committees for Sugar Analysis in more than thirty member countries. Work is carried out under various Subjects each headed by a Referee.
ICUMSA is the only international organisation concerned solely with analytical methods for the sugar industry. In addition to use by that industry, ICUMSA methods are recognised by authorities such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the OIML, the EU, and the US Food Chemicals Codex.
Methods are recommended for Tentative (T) approval by ICUMSA in the first instance. Upon meeting all the Commission's requirements, methods are accorded Official (O) status. Methods which are demonstrably useful and have found an established application, or which do not lend themselves to collaborative testing, are given an Accepted (A) status. Details of how the status of Methods has been established may be obtained by reading the relevant proceedings.
But how precisely is the whiteness of the sugar determined? In order for there to be an international standard, there needs to be a replicable scientific test to determine the ICUMSA rating of a sugar, and in order to achieve this level of precision and replicability, a colorimeter is used.A colorimeter is a piece of equipment that determines which wavelengths of light are best absorbed by a substance. This is a useful piece of equipment, and a useful testing method because it is the ability of a substance to absorb various wavelengths of light that determines its color. Therefore, if a sugar is very white and very refined, it will absorb little light, something which can be quantified by the colorimeter.To understand how this works in real world terms, think of how we humans perceive color. The human eye sees colors because certain objects absorb certain wavelengths of light, and reflect those which are not absorbed back to the eye. For example, a ball that appears blue to the human eye is simply made of a substance that absorbs all wavelengths of light apart from the blue ones, and reflects those back. The color, or rather the shade of white works similarly except for the fact that things which we perceive as being very white are actually absorbing almost no light, and instead are reflecting all the light back at the eye.
Sugar tested according to ICUMSA standards is usually tested with light wavelengths of 420 nm and 560 nm, and the standard colorimeter used to analyze sugar according to ICUMSA standards is a tristimulus colorimeter, an instrument which measures several readings along what is known as the visible spectrum (simply the spectrum of light that is visible to the human eye). The output reading is then based on how much light was absorbed by the sugar sample. A low reading, such as 45, indicates highly quality refined sugar which absorbs little light and appears very white to the human eye, whereas a high reading going into the 1000 + range indicates an unrefined raw sugar which absorbs much more light, and therefore appears brown and dark.
