Shri Brahmanand Sagar Jaggery Industries

The plant is located right on Gokak Road in Harugeri, and you can usually tell we are working before you even see the gate because of the smell of boiling juice. At Shri Brahmanand Sagar Jaggery Industries, we deal with a lot of sugarcane coming in from the nearby fields. It is seasonal work, so when the harvest is on, things get very hectic around here at Plot No. 150/6. We have the big pans where the liquid gets thickened over the fires. It is hot work, especially in the afternoons when the steam stays trapped under the roof. We don't have much time for sitting around when a batch is ready to be poured into the molds. The workers here have been doing this for years, and they know just by the color when the jaggery is done right. It isn’t a high-tech operation; we rely mostly on the traditional ways of boiling and cooling that people in this part of the country have used for a long time. We store the blocks in the back once they are hard enough to stack. Sometimes the weather makes things difficult, like when it rains and the wood for the fires gets damp, but we manage to keep the process moving. It’s a basic business, just turning cane into something sweet that people can use at home, and we stay busy enough keeping up with the local demand. The trucks arrive at all hours during the peak of the crushing season.