The process involves several steps, including washing, slicing, and extracting the sugar content through diffusion.

In time, most beet sugar factories began to refine their own production, but this did not lead to them being called refineries.

[8] In the tropics, the introduction of the steam engine put an end to the clear definitions of mill, factory, and refinery.

The beet sample is checked for: From these elements, the actual sugar content of the load is calculated, and the grower's payment determined.

[17] The used cossettes, now called beet pulp, exit the diffuser at about 95% moisture, but low sucrose content.

The liquid pressed out of the pulp is combined with the raw juice, or more often introduced into the diffuser at the appropriate point in the countercurrent process.

These breakdown products are not only losses of sucrose, but also have knock-on effects reducing the final output of processed sugar from the factory.

The raw juice moves to the next processing stages for removal of impurities and conversion to solid sugar.

The raw juice first undergoes purification to remove impurities which affect white sugar recovery quantity and quality.

The high alkalinity destroys monosaccharides and other compounds which are thermally unstable and would breakdown in subsequent processing steps.

The precipitate is removed by gravitation and filtration to leave a clear, lighter colored alkaline (ph 8.4 to 9.4) liquid known as thin juice.

The remainder of molasses is fructose and glucose produced as breakdown products of sucrose during processing and soluble anions and cations from the beet such as potassium, sodium, chlorides, and nitrogen compounds.

The soil and gravel washed from beet at reception may not be permitted to be returned to agricultural land but can be sold on as aggregate and topsoil for landscaping.

[26] Under the patronage of Frederick William III of Prussia, Franz Karl Achard opened the world's first beet sugar factory in 1801, at Kunern, Silesia (now Konary, Poland).

[27] The idea to produce sugar from beet was soon introduced to France, where Napoleon opened schools specifically for studying the plant.

[28] This was in response to British naval blockades of France during the Napoleonic Wars (and the reciprocal Continental System imposed by Napoleon), which limited cane sugar imports to Europe and ultimately stimulated the rapid growth of a European sugar beet industry.

[28] The sugar beet was introduced to North America after 1830, with the first commercial production starting in 1879 at a farm in Alvarado, California.

[31][33] By 1812, Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Quéruel, working for the industrialist Benjamin Delessert, devised a process of sugar extraction suitable for industrial application.

An attempt in Utah by the LDS Church-owned Deseret Manufacturing Company in the 1850s was carefully planned and funded but failed due to saline soil conditions.

In central Colorado[45] and western Nebraska, this was provided substantially by Germans from Russia who were already expert at sugar beet farming when they immigrated in large numbers circa 1890–1905.

The largest producers of beet sugar in the US were California, Utah, and Nebraska until the outbreak of World War II.

When they were interned during World War II, California's beet sugar production stalled, and was largely shifted to inland states such as Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Utah.

[55] Before World War I, the United Kingdom imported raw sugar from the cheapest market within its empire.

By the end of the century, sugar production had ceased and the factory was re-purposed as a store house for horsehair and matting.

[31] Sugar beet seed from France was listed in the annual catalogues of Gartons Agricultural Plant Breeders from that firm's inception in 1898 until the first of their own varieties was introduced in 1909.

The Wissington factory is the largest in Europe by the amount of sugar beet processed (3 million tonnes) a year.

Jacob Esipov built the first Russian commercial factory producing sugar from beets in the Tula Oblast.

After the war ended, local farmers preferred dairying to labor-intensive and less-profitable sugar beet production, and the factory closed in 1948.

[63] Australia continues to be a major sugar producer, but all production is from sugarcane grown in Queensland and northern New South Wales.

[64] Sugar beet is widely grown in New Zealand as cattle feed, and this practice has spread to some parts of Australia.