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.
