Sugar Milling Research Institute

Shaun Madho is a Process support Specialist at Illovo Sugar Africa. Prior to that was the Factory Support HOD at the SMRI for several years. He hopes that you, as an Executive, look back at your SMRI training as being pivotal to your progression and to creating a diverse, efficient and sustainable industry. Shaun has been an engineer at three factories, holds a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering and serves as the President of SASTA.

Steve Davis is the Research and Development Manager at the Sugar Milling Research Institute NPC (SMRI) in Durban. A Professional Chemical Engineer, he studied for his BSc and MSc in Engineering at the University of Natal in Durban, and is a member of SAIChE and IChemE. His research interests include clarification processes, colour removal from sugar juices and syrups (raw house and refinery), separation technologies and tracer testing. He is managing the Research and Development group at the SMRI in providing research outcomes to assist the processing industry to move towards and integrated biorefinery model to enhance sustainability. This includes the development of a general sugarcane biorefinery techno-economic model to advise research strategy and to provide intelligence to the industry on potential products and processes that the local industry could consider. He is responsible for development and effective implementation of the SMRI’s research strategy (currently based on transformation of the South African sugarcane processing industry towards a biorefinery-based approach), development of the SMRI’s annual Research Programme and delivery of approved targets against agreed milestones and timelines. He has written and presented numerous papers at local and international sugarcane and chemical engineering congresses and workshops.