The beet piles are gone. There are no more trucks hauling sugar beets into the factory and the clouds of steam that poured from its stacks have turned to the occasional puff.
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TORRINGTON – The beet piles are gone. There are no more trucks hauling sugar beets into the factory and the clouds of steam that poured from its stacks have turned to the occasional puff. After almost seven months the sugar beet campaign is over and Torrington Mayor Mike Varney believes it was one of the longest campaigns on record.
“I got (to Torrington) about 1960, and that whistle would blow at the end of January almost every year,” Varney said, a reference to the huge steam whistle the sugar factory would sound when the last beet was sliced. “Sometimes it wouldn’t be until into February, but Valentine’s Day would be about the longest I can remember.”
Western Sugar Cooperative’s CEO Rodney Perry agreed that campaign had gone longer than anyone expected, but even with some of the setbacks experienced in the expansion of the Scottsbluff and Fort Morgan plants, the three plants managed to process over three million tons of sugar beets.
“We’re done slicing beets,” Perry said. “We were completely done slicing last weekend [March 25].
“We had a challenging year and we’ve worked through a lot of issues with the facilities. Integrating the plants with older and newer equipment was much more complicated than what we had originally expected. But even so, our production was very similar to last year.”
For many in the local sugar beet industry, including growers, plant employees and Western Sugar itself, calling the 2016-17 campaign challenging might be
an understatement.
Before the first beet was even sliced, Western Sugar announced the Torrington plant would only be in operation through November 2016 because, with the additional capacity being built added in Scottsbluff and Fort Morgan, there was no need for the plant to operate longer.
In November, due to unexpected expansion issues in the other two plants, it was announced the Torrington plant would operate through December. However, Christmas came and went and work continued.
It was announced in February, with the plant still in operation, that March payments to growers would be deferred to sometime in the future. Then, in March, it was announced that there would be no March payment, and not only would the Torrington plant finish out the campaign, it would also be in operation for the beginning of the 2017-18 campaign.