US Sugar completes 80th annual sugarcane harvest -- 10% loss due to freezes

March 21, 2011 - PRLog -- NEWS RELEASE

CONTACT:  JUDY SANCHEZ
863.902.2210
561.261.3167


U.S. SUGAR COMPLETES ITS 80th ANNUAL SUGARCANE HARVEST SEASON
LIMITING FREEZE IMPACT TO 10%


                  Clewiston, FL – March 21, 2010 – U.S. Sugar Corporation completed its 80th annual sugarcane harvest operations Monday afternoon and its Clewiston Sugar Factory will finish grinding and processing Tuesday a crop that was hammered by freezing temperatures.

“Mother Nature was absolutely brutal to the 2010-2011 sugarcane crop. The cane was hit early and often by an unprecedented 15 days of below freezing temperatures in January 2010 and then was hit again late in its growth cycle by unprecedented early December deep freezes,” said Judy Sanchez, senior director of corporate communications and public affairs.

U.S. Sugar, which will celebrate its 80th Anniversary on April 29, 2011, harvested approximately 5.63 million tons of sugarcane which yielded 631,000 tons of raw sugar and 38 million gallons of molasses.  

“The investments that we’ve made in improving every aspect of our operation helped to limit somewhat the impact of the weather,” Sanchez said.   “Even so, freeze damage reduced both sugarcane tonnage and sugar yield, with an estimated 10% decrease in sugar production as compared to last year.”

“With the rest of the Florida sugar industry reporting 13%-20% production losses due to the freezes, clearly our more modern milling operations have shown their value,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez said that the Company’s investments in superior infrastructure and technology along with the best people in the industry helped to offset the rapid deterioration that warmer than average temperatures immediately following the freezes caused to Florida’s sugarcane. The Clewiston Sugar Factory ran extremely well all year and its refinery operation, currently undergoing a 10% expansion, again is on a potentially record-breaking pace.

“Our proprietary scheduling and 24-hour harvest program, an efficient railroad transportation system and state-of-the-art sugar manufacturing facility enabled us to avoid more severe losses,” said Sanchez.  “Even though we started harvesting weeks earlier and we ran later than everyone else, we were very pleased that we harvested 100% of our crop—and in fact, our cane quality was better over the last three weeks than it was in the middle of the harvest.”

“With global and domestic sugar prices remaining relatively high due to drastic weather events in some of the world’s largest sugar exporting countries, every ton of cane we saved and every pound of sugar we extracted are important,” Sanchez said.

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U.S. Sugar is the country’s largest vertically integrated producer of sugarcane and refined cane sugar and one of Florida’s major producers of oranges and orange juice products. U.S. Sugar also owns an independent short line railroad, SCFE.