Michigan Sugar plans for $65 million investment

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Michigan Sugar plans for $65 million investment

The Michigan Sugar Company is investing more than $65 million into a desugarization facility at its Bay City factory and adding $8 million in new equipment in Caro and Sebewaing to support the expansion.

Michigan Sugar President and CEO Mark Flegenheimer tells Brownfield the process will allow the company to capture 40 percent more sugar from molasses and extract 80 million additional pounds of natural sugar from the same amount of sugarbeets.

“This is really exciting from a sustainability standpoint because we’re not going to plant one additional acre of beets,” he says.

Once up and running, cooperative members should be able to net an extra $10 to $15 million annually in added revenue.

“Demand for sugar has been good,” he says.  “The sugar market is strong and certainly this additional sugar we’ll be producing we’ll able to market very easily right here in Michigan or Ohio and Indiana,”

Flegenheimer says the company will also be able to double the amount of betaine production, which is used in poultry feed, and raffinate, which is used for many products including a road deicer, through the extraction process.

Michigan Sugar has made more than $150 million in facility investments over the past five years according to Flegenheimer.

Hear more about the investments in Flegenheimer’s interview.

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