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Pioneer Sugar Parent Company Dedicates New Desugarization Plant

Aug. 5, 2024
New facility will help Michigan Sugar Co. extract an additional 80 million pounds of sugar annually without planting another acre of sugarbeets.

Michigan Sugar Co., which processes sugar sold under the Pioneer Sugar retail brand as well as for foodservice, industrial and co-product customers, dedicated its new molasses desugarization facility at its Monitor Township sugarbeet slicing facility, a couple months after the operation came online.

The 22,000-sq.-ft. desugarization plant will allow the company to extract an additional 80 million pounds of sugar per year from 100% of the molasses byproduct from the initial sugar extraction process. The company touted that the facility will allow it to produce more sugar without increasing its agricultural impact.

Prior to investing $109 million into building the facility, Michigan Sugar was able to extract additional sugar from only 60% of the molasses. The company expects to process up to 650 tons of molasses per day — twice as much has it had previously processed per day (325 tons).

The project also included the addition of a new 33,000-gal. extract tank at the Monitor Township site, as well as juice softening equipment at the company’s Caro and Sebewaing, Mich., factories.

About the Author

Andy Hanacek | Senior Editor

Andy Hanacek has covered meat, poultry, bakery and snack foods as a B2B editor for nearly 20 years, and has toured hundreds of processing plants and food companies, sharing stories of innovation and technological advancement throughout the food supply chain. In 2018, he won a Folio:Eddie Award for his unique "From the Editor's Desk" video blogs, and he has brought home additional awards from Folio and ASBPE over the years. In addition, Hanacek led the Meat Industry Hall of Fame for several years and was vice president of communications for We R Food Safety, a food safety software and consulting company.

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