After doing a lot of research on sugar cane juicers, I went ahead and purchased the manual crank sugar cane juicer from Green Planet Farm.
I have a regular fruit and veggie juicer at home and it kinda sorta works horribly and takes a lot of work and constant cleaning of the filter and you have to remove the skin and cut the cane into tiny pieces like others have mentioned. My regular fruit and veggie juicer was struggling hard and I had to stop after getting about two gulps of juice because I felt the motor on my juicer was about to burn out. I Strongly recommend against using a regular fruit and veggie juicer for sugarcane.
I first had to decide wether I wanted an electric or manual sugar cane press. I wanted a good press that would last a long time and one that would be less likely to break down. After speaking to some workers at the local Asian markets that have electric sugar cane juicers, I found out that good electric juicers can cost $1500-2000 for a good quality juicer. One shop that I spoke to said that their juicer cost approximately $1500 and the motor just burnt out last week. Luckily, they had a backup machine because apparently these electric juicers tend to burn out or just stop working every once in a while.
Due to the high cost and issues with the electric juicers, I decided to get a manual juicer. A manual juicer also works better for me because I intend to bring my juicer to my relatives house and the area where I plan to do some juicing does not have an electrical outlet. I really love the thought of being able to juice cane without having to rely on electricity.
After a quick google search, I found many manual crank sugar cane juicers on the market, mostly from Asian countries. The cheaper ones had really bad reviews and looked like they were poorly built and would not last long at all. I was comparing all of the manual crank juicers to the one from Green a Planet Farm because there is a YouTube video on that model and their machine looked solid and industrial strength. After more googling, I found several other distributors that sold units that looked nearly identical to the one sold by Green Planet Farm and many of these distributors actually listed their machines for a lower price.
I contacted several of theses manufacturers/distributors(most of them are in China) and tried to bargain with them for an even lower price than what they listed their machines for. A couple distributors lowered their price to around $380. One distributor at first said that their price included shipping but he kept changing the price and then said there was additional charge for shipping to my house, I guess the free shipping is to the US only?, and I did not trust the seller so I decided not to use him.
After more chatter with distributors, I found out that some of them would take up to a month if not longer for me to receive my unit. After all this hassle, I thought to myself, what a pain in the ass it would be if I received the unit and it was damaged. I would have to return the unit, possibly with me paying the shipping back to China, or I would possibly have to file a claim with The shipping company and it could be many more months before I would be able to juice any cane.
I finally decided to purchase the unit from Green Planet Farm in order to avoid having to deal with sellers from another country and all the possible pitfalls that may come along dealing with them. There is already a video of the unit from GPF so I know what the unit looks like and how it operates. GPF is also located in the US and they have a customer satisfaction guarantee and a 1 year warranty. They also have replacement parts and I had an excellent experience emailing GPF. They were very nice and answered my emails promptly. They are also a small family owned and operated company and I would much rather give them my business than some of those other sellers that kept giving me the run around.
I recently placed my order and I should receive my unit sometime next week. I will give a review of this unit after I put it together and run some cane through it. Anyone else have a sugarcane press? I'm interested in any tips or advice on juicing sugarcane and if there are certain spare parts that I should have on hand. Cheers,
Simon