"The last sugar beat factory in California is closing and the poorest county in the state is taking a huge hit. On Sept. 9, Imperial County leaders declared a state of economic emergency in response to the closure of the Spreckels Sugar Co. plant in Brawley. In April, the plant's owner (Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative) announced the plant closure would come at the end of the processing year and move operations to Minnesota after March."
"The use of beets to refine for sugar started in Germany in the 1790s. The first attempts grown beets in the U.S. in the 1830s but the experiments did not have success. The California Beet Sugar Co. in Alvarado was the first successful sugar beet factory in the U.S. in 1870. But it had ups and downs. Successful commercial production did not take off until the 1890s in California."
"In 1917, there were 15 beet processing plants in California processing 154,000 acres of beets and half of the acreage was in Orange County. By the 1950s, California and Colorado produced 50% of the nations beet sugar. There were plants with huge acreage in Spreckels (Salinas Valley), Chino, Oxnard, Hamilton City, Los Alamitos, Santa Ana and Betteravia to name a few."
Imperial County declared a state of economic emergency after the Spreckels Sugar Co. plant in Brawley announced closure at the end of the processing year, with operations moving to Minnesota. The plant owner is the Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative. The closure threatens 249 full-time jobs, $16.7 million in payroll and about $28 million in annual economic activity in the county. The cooperative cited long-term financial and operational challenges and industry uncertainty as reasons. Beet sugar production in the U.S. traces to Germany in the 1790s, with California becoming a major producer by the early 20th century.
Read at www.ocregister.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]