The diagram shows the process used to make sugar. Overall, this is a largely mechanical process comprising two main stages: the farming of sugar cane and the processing of the crop, which turns it into a liquid and eventually into sugar.
The first stage of the process is the longest as the sugar cane takes between 12 to 18 months to grow tall enough for harvesting. Once it is fully grown, the crop can be harvested in two ways, either mechanically using specialist machinery or by hand, a much more labor-intensive method.
The second stage is wholly mechanical and involves five steps. First, the plants are crushed to form a juice, which is then extracted. The juice is purified by passing it through a limestone filter before being heated. During this step, the liquid content of the juice evaporates leaving behind a syrup. The syrup is then put in a centrifuge and spun at a high enough speed to separate out the sugar crystals, which are subsequently dried and cooled to produce the final product.