Santa Lúcia Power Plant

How the Santa Lúcia Plant saved about R$300,000 during the harvest season with Tebe

About the USL

The Santa Lúcia Plant is one of the leading producers of sugar and ethanol in the city of Araras, in the interior of São Paulo.

Founded in 1910, the company has over a century of experience in the sugar and ethanol industry, always striving to combine tradition and innovation to ensure its competitiveness and sustainability. One of the company’s commitments is to continuously invest in cutting-edge technologies to optimize production and energy efficiency.

The start of the Partnership

USL came to Tebe with the goal of optimizing asset management and reducing corrective maintenance hours. During the 2021 harvest, USL experienced 15.3 hours of downtime in the processing system, with 3,883 hours of operation.

During the 2021/2022 harvest season, the Santa Lúcia Mill used Tebe’s online monitoring system to track the health of its assets. The mill processed over 1,480,000 tons during the harvest season and, with the help of predictive maintenance, achieved 94.28% plant availability—a 6 percentage point increase compared to the previous harvest season.

And over the course of the year, there were 5.7 hours of downtime in the processing system, with 4,043 hours of operation. In other words, during the last harvest, there was a reduction of about 10 hours of downtime, resulting in savings of approximately R$300,000.

The key to this achievement was USL’s commitment to continuous improvement. By investing in cutting-edge technology, the plant optimized its processes and eliminated corrective maintenance entirely in 2022.

José Aparecido, an Industrial Maintenance Supervisor who has been with the company for 26 years, says that throughout that time, USL has sought to help the plant evolve in terms of knowledge and improvements. He says that with Tebe, they found the help they were looking for.

“We used to have a company that came by every month to take readings. But with the Tebe team, we now have access to that equipment data 24 hours a day,” says José.

For Adalberto Ortolani, Mill Supervisor, the modernization has been great. “I used to have to go out and check things in person, but not anymore. Now I just go to my office, turn on the computer, and I already know how the machine is running. I can even see it from home!”

The current reality

In 2023, USL upgraded its monitoring system, increasing its focus on alarms and enabling more accurate decision-making. The partnership resulted in a notable milestone: a 50% reduction in the frequency of hammer replacements, which had previously been common due to rotor imbalance.

Thanks to continuous monitoring of the sugarcane shredder, the frequency of component replacement decreased from 6 to 3 times, resulting in total cost savings of R$270,000 during the harvest season.

This is just one of the many improvements resulting from our partnership with Tebe.

By installing sensors on more machines and increasing monitoring, the plant has already achieved a more than fourfold increase in ROI and reduced machine downtime by more than 10 hours.