Western Sugar to stay in operation next year

Bud Patterson
Posted 3/31/17

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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Western Sugar to stay in operation next year

Posted

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.

“We’ve had multiple growers meeting, and with our employees, the last few months to keep them informed,” Perry said. “It is our intention to prepare the (Torrington) plant to run for a few months next year.
“We’ve been producing big crops that last few years and to have that extra capacity for that period of time to work out any other adjustments we need to make we feel is the
right choice.”
He also pointed out that it is not Western Sugars intention to close the Torrington plant completely, just to stop processing sugar beets there. The plant has already been repurposed to package, store and ship commercial-sized bags of powdered sugar.
“We’re going to have about 20 full-time positions at the plant, year round,” Perry said. “We did invest some money back into packaging this past year and even expanded the powdered capacity.”
Although this season saw some very significant fluctuations in weather, which also contributed to the Torrington plant staying open, Perry said the company saw much fewer discarded beets than might have been expected.
“All three plants did a tremendous job of being able to slice lower
purity beets.
“We had one of the warmest Februarys on record in our growing are, but our ag staff did a phenomenal job managing the beets during that period of time, putting them through the plant and processing the sugar from them.”
Perry admits that there were more discarded sugar beets than the company would have wanted, but that is always case since they would like to see every beet processed.
“We stripped out the outside of some of the piles and took off the tops, so there were some discarded beets. But most of those went to our growers as feed.”
Besides finishing the expansions in Fort Morgan and Scottsbluff, Perry also said there were other investments the company is looking to make over time, like more ventilation of the piles, which is crucial when temperatures start to rise.
“It was a typical (campaign) year until February,” he said. “But I was very happy that we could process beets as long as we could.”
One of the benefits of the plant running through the full campaign and being in operation for a period of time next campaign is the impact to the city of Torrington’s coffers. Torrington Treasurer Lynette Strecker said that because the plant remained opened there was a definite, unplanned for revenue boost that was not planned.
The city supplies electricity to the sugar plant, but due to last years announcement that Western Sugar was closing the plant, the revenue generated by the plant’s electrical usage was not included in this
year’s budget.
“It is hard to tell what effect the plant has on sales tax,” Strecker said. “But in 2016 Western Sugar generated about $1.2 million in gross electrical revenues, or about $30,000 annually in net revenue to the city. That is what we were counting on losing when the plant announced it would close.
“So at least for another year, we can utilize that in our budget.”