Shree Renuka Sugars is fundamentally a sugar refinery that grew backwards into cane fields and forwards into the fuel tank - it is India’s largest sugar refiner, the owner of the country’s top packaged sugar brand, and a major supplier of ethanol to the government’s petrol-blending programme. It started in 1998 with a single mill in Karnataka and scaled by pioneering the idea of running sugar plants on lease and building power projects at other people’s mills, before becoming part of Wilmar International, the world’s largest sugar company, which now holds a 62.48% stake. The recurring approach is integration without waste: cane is crushed for sugar, the leftover molasses becomes ethanol, the fibrous bagasse is burned for power, and even the press mud goes back to farmers as compost - every by-product is a second revenue stream.
Business segments
Five engines anchored to the same cane stalk - a refining-and-milling core that feeds a national consumer brand, a growing ethanol business, a captive power operation, and a small engineering arm that sells the know-how to others.
1. Sugar milling and refining: the integrated core that feeds everything else
The company runs eight mills to crush cane and two of India’s largest port-based refineries to turn raw sugar into white sugar - the combined system can process 37,500 tonnes of cane and 5,500 tonnes of raw sugar every day.
- Cane crushed within a 50-mile radius - each mill draws sugarcane from farming clusters close by, which keeps transport costs low and cane fresh, and the company uses a sulphur-free process that yields a cleaner sugar.
- Ports give it a raw-material edge - the two refineries sit at Kandla on the west coast and Haldia on the east coast, so the company can land imported raw sugar right at the factory gate and ship finished sugar out without costly inland haulage.
- Raw sugar comes from its parent - a major portion of the raw sugar the refineries melt is procured from Wilmar, which gives it a reliable supply line that independent refiners do not have.
- Exports flow through Wilmar Agri Trading DMCC - white sugar is sold to destination countries through Wilmar Agri Trading DMCC, a Wilmar subsidiary that is a leading trader in Middle East and North Africa markets.
- Flexible where the sugar goes - the business model lets it switch between selling local sugar, branded sugar, and export sugar, so it can chase whichever market pays best at the time.
2. Madhur: the branded sugar that sits on every kitchen shelf
Madhur commands a 33% share of India’s branded sugar market and reaches consumers through more than 130,000 general trade outlets and nearly all major modern trade and e-commerce platforms.
- Sold on a purity promise - the brand is built on a ‘5S Guarantee’ (pure, consistent, sulphur-free, white, safe) and the sugar is untouched by hand from factory to packet, which makes it a premium alternative to loose sugar sold in open markets.
- Packs drive more than half of domestic sales - the consumer pack contributes over 50% of the sugar the company sells inside India, giving it a stickier, higher-margin channel alongside bulk sales.
- Distribution handed to a cousin - from July 2026, a fellow Wilmar subsidiary, AWL Agri Business, will market and distribute Madhur through its network of about 113 depots and access to roughly 0.95 million retail outlets, while the company keeps the brand, manufactures the sugar, and earns a royalty of 1% on sales from its own mills.
- Tested beyond sugar - the company launched Madhur jaggery in select states and took the sugar brand international, landing it on shelves in Vancouver and Toronto in early 2025.
3. Ethanol: the fuel business built on sugar’s leftovers
With 1,250 kilolitres per day of distillation capacity spread across three sites, the company is one of India’s biggest suppliers of ethanol to oil marketing companies under the government’s blending mandate.
- Three feedstocks, one still - the distilleries can run on sugarcane juice, B-heavy molasses, or C-heavy molasses, and the company even pioneered an in-house process to make ethanol directly from juice, so it can shift inputs depending on sugar prices and government policy.
- Sitting right next to the mills - each distillery is co-located with a sugar mill in high-cane areas of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, which means the molasses feedstock travels metres, not miles, and supply is assured even when the industry runs short.
- Almost all output is premium grade - in its latest year, 94% of the 159 million litres produced was premium-grade ethanol, the kind that fetches the best price from oil companies.
- Built for a government mandate - the entire business is geared to supply the Ethanol Blending Programme, which targets 20% ethanol in every litre of petrol, creating a structural buyer with a total capacity target of 10.2 billion litres by 2025.
4. Co-generation: power from the same cane that makes the sugar
Bagasse - the dry fibre left after crushing cane - is burned to generate 259 MW of power, most of it used to run the company’s own plants, with the surplus sold to the grid.
- Fuel that costs nothing extra - the bagasse is a by-product the mills already have, so the power plants run on a fuel that arrives free at the factory gate, giving them a cost structure a standalone power plant cannot match.
- Mostly green, mostly captive - around 81% of the energy from co-generation is renewable, and the bulk of it powers the company’s own crushing and refining operations, insulating it from grid electricity prices.
- Surplus sold outside - in a single year the mills exported 148 million units of electricity to the state grid, other industries, and power exchanges, turning a cost-saving measure into a small but real revenue line.
- Zero-waste in practice - the ash from the boilers goes to local brick makers, and the press mud from the mills is turned into organic compost and given to farmers, so the mills produce almost nothing that is thrown away.
5. Engineering projects: selling the factory-building know-how
Through its wholly-owned subsidiary KBK Chem-Engineering, the company designs and builds turnkey distilleries, bio-ethanol plants, sugar mills, and co-generation plants for third-party clients.
- A consultancy that builds - KBK offers end-to-end solutions from design to commissioning for sugar, ethanol, brewery, and chemical processing plants, effectively selling the expertise the parent company developed for its own factories.
- Cleaned up to stand alone - the parent has repeatedly converted loans into equity in KBK - most recently Rs. 57.4 crore in late 2025 - to strengthen its balance sheet and reduce its debt load.
Group structure and partners
The company sits inside the Wilmar International group, which supplies its raw sugar, buys its finished sugar, and now distributes its flagship brand - making it both a subsidiary and a node in a global agribusiness network.
- Wilmar Sugar and Energy Pte. Ltd., Singapore, holds a 62.48% stake and has placed three directors on the board: the group chairman, the group sugar head, and the group CFO.
- Wilmar infused Rs. 2,100 crore of equity and US$300 million of debt into the company, and supplies a major portion of the raw sugar that feeds the refineries.
- The marketing and distribution agreement for Madhur, effective July 2026, is with AWL Agri Business Limited - another Wilmar subsidiary - making the brand’s entire route to market a related-party affair.
- The company has five subsidiaries, including Gokak Sugars (which runs a mill in Karnataka and is being merged into the parent) and Anamika Sugar Mills (a 4,000 TCD mill in Uttar Pradesh acquired in 2023, now expanding to 7,000 TCD).
- Three wholly-owned subsidiaries - a trading company, a food-and-warehousing venture, and a port-infrastructure firm - were merged into the parent in December 2024, simplifying the structure.