![]() ![]() Glades Sugar House is a modern manufacturing facility, and also the center of the Cooperative's operations. The mill grinds approximately 3 million tons of sugarcane each annual harvest, producing more than a half-billion pounds of raw sugar per year. It operates 24-hours a day through the 150-day harvest season. ![]() Today, Glades Sugar House is one of the largest raw sugar mills in the world with the capacity to grind 26,000 tons of sugarcane per day. The mill opened on November 22, 1962, with the capacity to grind 6,000 tons of sugarcane per day. In April 1961, the decision was made to build the mill, named Glades Sugar House. The member-growers were assessed 30 cents per ton produced in 1960 to pay for the feasibility study to build their own sugar mill. Once formed, the Cooperative's immediate need was to build a state-of-the-art processing facility and agricultural equipment to harvest the sugar cane grown by its members. Florida Crystals is a privately held company that is part of FLO-SUN, a sugar empire of the Fanjul family whose origins trace to Spanish-Cuban sugar plantations of the early 19th century. In 2005, California and Hawaiian Sugar Company was acquired by American Sugar Refining (ASR, better known as Domino Sugar), a company owned by Florida Crystals and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida. The Cooperative makes it possible for these family farmers to stay abreast of the most recent technological advancements in science to protect and preserve the environment and provide economic stability and viability in an increasingly complex global business. In the years since then, the Cooperative has grown in scale and scope and is now a vertically integrated operation involved in the farming, processing, marketing, refining and distribution of cane sugar.Ĭollectively, the farmers of the Cooperative have all of the resources, technical and regulatory support, marketing and legal resources, usually afforded to only the largest farming operations. In July 1960, 54 farmer-members chartered Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida. The group's goal was to provide a means to harvest, mill, process, and market sugar and its by-products from a collective crop of sugarcane to bring stability to the growers operations. The history of the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida dates back to the 1950s when 16 farmers met to discuss joining together with other farmers in the region known as the Glades Area, which is west of West Palm Beach, Florida, and southeast of Lake Okeechobee, to form a farming cooperative. The Cooperative produces more than 350,000 tons of raw sugar annually. The raw sugar is then marketed to one of the ASR Group's sugar refineries. ![]() Sugarcane grown by Cooperative members is harvested, transported and processed. The Cooperative is made up of 45 grower-owners who produce sugarcane on approximately 70,000 acres of some of the most fertile farmland in America, located in the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA). Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida is a vertically integrated agricultural enterprise that harvests, transports and processes sugarcane grown primarily in Palm Beach County, Florida and markets the raw sugar and blackstrap molasses through the Florida Sugar and Molasses Exchange. ![]()
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