Visit to Jaggery Factory

I was at my village on the Republic Day long three day weekend and was planning to go to the jaggery making factory/unit to taste the hot jaggery and also to click the images of making to share them with you. Most of these units can be found between Satara and Kolhapur on the National Highway 4 (Poona Bangalore Highway), the reason being the large amount of sugarcane found in this area. I am happy to share the making of the jaggery along with the images. Hope you don’t stop eating jaggery after watching the images.

As you are aware about the process of making sugarcane juice, similarly the juice is extracted from the sugarcane on a large quantity in a huge container and then it is poured in a huge vessel. This juice is later boiled at a very high temperature for around 1.5 hours. After extracting the juice from the sugarcane, it is dried and later used to light the fire beneath the huge vessel. It needs to be stirred continuously after it starts boiling. In one session approximately, 180-190 kgs of jaggery is made. The hot vessel is lifted and the jaggery is poured in a big square shaped area to bring down the temperature. Before the jaggery gets cold and gets harder, the moulding vessels are filled with jaggery. These moulds are of 1/2kg, 1kg or 5kgs as per the requirement. The jaggery is packed in plastic and then finally into the boxes to be sent to the nearby markets or various cities like Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Pune and also outside India.

The place where the jaggery is not clean but you cannot resist having the fresh sugarcane juice and the hot and soft jaggery offered by the workers working day and night in shifts.

To view images, click here.

Thanks and Regards.