| Local entrepreneurs are trying to add some sweetness to a sugar industry
thats turned sour in recent years.
The farmers are hoping to save the Holly Sugar plant in rural Brawley
by adding sugar cane processing to existing beet production.
Sugar prices hit a 20-year low last year and earlier this month sugar
farmers dodged another attempt to remove their aide programs from the
federal Farm Bill.
California started 2001 with four sugar-processing plants. Now there
are only two.
Valley sugar beet farmers Craig Elmore, Larry Fleming and Carson Kalin,
co-owners of Brawley-based Imperial Bioresources LLC, have been testing
sugar cane production so the Holly plant can operate year-round.
Imperial Bioresources also intends to build a sugar cane-to-ethanol-
and electricity-generating plant next to the Holly Sugar site at 395 W.
Keystone Road.
Upgrades to the sugar plant and construction of the new ethanol plant
are estimated to cost well over $100 million, the Bioresources owners say.
They also say the seasons of the two sugar crops complement each other.
Sugar cane grows in the summer and sugar beets grow in the winter.
The Holly plant employs 103 full-time workers and about 300 during the
five-month sugar beet season.
Year-round sugar production means the part-time jobs will become full
time, Holly Sugar plant union President Abel Aguirre said. Those employees
will be eligible to receive health benefits, he said.
Most of the employees at the plant have children, Aguirre said. When
the seasonal employees are not working, they dont get any health
insurance, he said.
When the plant employees are working, they get supplemental insurance
for free, Aguirre said. The supplemental insurance only pays 20 percent of
medical bills, he said.
It doesnt pay much, but its better than nothing, Aguirre
said.
If this project materializes, it will bring job security to the
employees, Aguirre said. If it doesnt ...
Aguirre said he would not want to guess the plants future.
In the 1970s, there were nine sugar-processing plants in California,
Spreckles Sugar Co. District Manager Bill Stewart said.
Now there are only two, the plant in rural Brawley and another in
Mendota.
Two other sugar plants in California stopped processing this year. The
two plants, in Woodland and Tracy, remain open for packaging, distributing
and storing. Together they employ fewer than 80 workers, Aguirre said.
The sugar industry has gone through so many changes, figuring out who
owns the Holly Sugar plant can be confusing.
This facility is the Holly Sugar facility, owned by Imperial Sugar
and doing business as Spreckles, Stewart said.
There were three separate companies, Holly, Imperial and Spreckles, but
because of the tough sugar economy, theyve merged into one company,
Stewart said.
Imperial and Holly Sugar merged in the late 1980s, Stewart said. A
couple of years ago, Spreckles was in bankruptcy and getting ready to
fold, causing Holly and Imperial to buy Spreckles, he said.
The Holly Sugar plant will produce 170,000 tons of cane sugar
double what it produces now when it runs year-round, Fleming said.
But, California will still be producing less sugar than in 2000, when
the state had four sugar production plants operating, he said.
The Holly plant employees union the United Food and Commercial
Workers supports this project, Aguirre said. UFCW has 1.5 million
members in the United States and Canada.
Aguirre has been working at the Holly plant for 18 years. Hes been a
union member all that time and has served the last two years as the local
president.
Aguirre said his biggest concern is plant safety, in particular, since
part of the plan calls for building an ethanol plant.
Ethanol is an explosive, he said. Workers involved in that
part of the project would need additional safety training.
Current employees working at the Holly plant would be first in line to
get re-training for the higher-paying, full-time jobs, Fleming said.
Construction on the ethanol plant will start within a year and is
expected to be completed by November 2004, Aguirre said.
The Bioresources group has already made initial contact with the county
to start the permitting process.
Sugar cane-to-ethanol is an exciting part of the plan, but saving sugar
is the heart of the project, Fleming said.
Elmore added, Theres the misconception that this is a beet grower
plan, but it all started to save Holly. |