Since the former sugar mills in Stuttgart and Heilbronn were being engulfed by the cities' ever expanding residential communities, Süddeutsche Zucker AG decided to build a new, larger factory. To achieve optimum economies of scale, it was designed to also take over the production volume of Zuckerfabrik Züttlingen. The Offenau facility's first beet campaign took place in 1971. In conjunction with the planned shut-down of the Waghäusel sugar mill, the factory was expanded from a production capacity of 8,500 tonnes of beets per day in time for the 1996 campaign to its current 12,700 tonnes beets per day. Offenau is thus one of Südzucker's major plants.

Sugar is extracted during campaigns, which are timed to coincide with the sugar beet harvest. The factory operates twenty-four hours per day from mid-September to mid-December. During the sugar beet campaign, 1,600 tonnes of sugar are produced daily. Some of the intermediate product, beet syrup, is not immediately converted to sugar. Instead, it is stored in a 50,000 cubic-meter beet syrup tank. The contents of this tank are used during a thirty-day beet syrup campaign in May and June of the following year to produce about 40,000 tonnes of crystallized sugar. The mill's total sugar output of about 170,000 tonnes is enough to satisfy the needs of approximately four million German citizens. Two on-site sugar silos can hold 70,000 tonnes of sugar.

The plant's energy requirements are provided by two high-pressure steam turbines fired by natural gas or oil. The steam turbines drive two electric generators that supply the plant with electricity, and the low-pressure exiting steam is used as a source of heat in the production process - a classic cogeneration configuration.

During the campaign, about 180 people are employed at the plant. The number drops to about 150 during the off-season. Most are specialists qualified to handle the sugar extraction equipment, as well as repair and maintain the sophisticated technical systems. Every year, operations maintenance technicians, industrial mechanics and one industrial accountant are trained at Offenau as part of an apprenticeship program.

About 2,570 farmers plant sugar beets on an area of 15,000 hectares for the factory. The area covered spans from Tübingen in the south to greater Wertheim/Tauberbischofsheim in the north and from the Rhine River in the west to Crailsheim in the east. Beet cultivation and payment are regulated by a contract. In areas such as beet growing and the associated logistics, among others, Südzucker and farmers work in partnership in order to ensure that the quality of the raw materials supplied to the factories; i.e., beets, is the best possible, and that they arrive at the right time.