Engineering with One Eye on the Bottom Line

Doug Svenson is one part scientist and one part economist, which makes him one skilled engineer. The senior process development engineer joined Imperial Sugar Company (ISC) in May to work on new products and process development.

“My particular role is to branch out of our existing core business to create niche markets, by changing our current product portfolio, modifying the products we make, or making new products,” Svenson explains. The economist in him never loses sight of the bottom-line aspect of his role, which is “to create positive cash flow for the company,” he says.

In doing product development, Svenson’s approach is to eliminate process steps to reach the same end result. “When you have unnecessary steps in a process, you incur extra costs in capital, and that all gets rolled into the price of a product, which impacts customers and, ultimately, the company.”

Doug Svenson is one part scientist and one part economist, the senior process development engineer joined Imperial Sugar Company to work on new products and process development.

Svenson earned his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in wood and paper chemistry from North Carolina State University. He then spent 10 years working in wood and pulp industry research and development. Because wood is comprised of 55 percent to 60 percent polysaccharides, Svenson learned much about sugar chemistry throughout his education and career, even before arriving at Imperial Sugar.

The bulk of his time so far at ISC has gone toward refining the production process for Steviacane,™ a low-calorie, all-natural blend of sugar and stevia. Billed as a new generation of sweetener, Steviacane is deservedly receiving enormous attention from the company’s product development team.

In June, Svenson and the ISC team made a major push forward with a large-scale, multi-day test run of the new granulated sweetener at the company’s Port Wentworth refinery.

“We ran Steviacane for an extended period to look for ways to optimize the process and study the product’s variability,” he says. “What we found is that the product variability was very low, and the product quality was very high. We also identified ways to increase our productivity and efficiency by 80 percent.”

Stepping into a new project, like Steviacane, requires an engineer to tame a swirling mass of information by using every bit of science he knows.

“When you’re coming into something new, it’s almost like managing chaos,” Svenson says. It requires gaining an understanding of a product and the process for making it, as well as the chemistries taking place during its production and the desires of the consumers, who end up with the product.

“You have to ask: What kind of properties do you want to build in to this new product? For example, with a granulated or powdered sweetener, we want to prevent it from absorbing water or getting cakey when it’s sitting in someone’s pantry,” he says.

“The next question is: Can we improve those qualities by changing a process or changing one of the inputs? You have a lot of different things to consider, which means you have to have a broad knowledge of engineering and chemistry, and have a good understanding of what your customer wants.”

The customer, after all, is the one who will see the product on the shelf and want to take it home. Svenson’s thinking always takes him back to these questions: “Is this a good product? Is this something you’d want to buy? Is it priced right?”

He has faith the work he’s doing with Steviacane will be game-changer for the business: “I think we’re going to have a significant impact on the sweetener industry. And I love the process of creating something new. That’s what gets me excited.”