Western Sugar Cooperative

Western Sugar Cooperative
Agricultural marketing cooperative
Founded 1903
Headquarters Denver, Colorado, United States
Area served
 Colorado
Products sugar
Website www.westernsugar.com

The Western Sugar Cooperative is a grower owned American agricultural cooperative.

History

Its origins date from 1903 when Charles Boettcher founded the Great Western Sugar Company and opened a sugar beet plant in Loveland, Colorado and another in Greeley, Colorado.[1] Starting at its creation in 1903 Great Western brought in German and Russian families and single Japanese men to help with the labors of sugar beet farming. These people would work in the fields of the South Platte Valley until 1916. By then Spanish Americans had taken over the need for beet labor.[2] When the Utah Sugar Company approached Great Western Sugar Company in 1902, the companies agreed to allow Utah Sugar to expand into Idaho, provided Utah Sugar didn't expand into Colorado.[1] This was likely on behalf of Henry Osborne Havemeyer, whose American Sugar Refining Company owned 50% of both companies.[1] The Loveland plant closed in 1977, when the company was purchased by the sugar firm Tate & Lyle, at which time the name was changed to the Western Sugar Company. In 2002, more than 1000 sugar beet growers purchased the company, creating the grower owned cooperative.

The organization is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. It has five refineries, located at Fort Morgan, Colorado, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Torrington and Lovell, Wyoming, and Billings, Montana.

In May 2015 the company announced it would be ending production at the Torrington site and would only use that site for storage. As such it plans to reduce the workforce at its Torrington site from 76 staffers to just 6. The changes we're set to take effect late 2016, however as of early 2018 it is still fully operable.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Arrington, Leonard J. (1966). Beet sugar in the West; a history of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1891-1966. University of Washington Press. p. 57. OCLC 234150.
  2. ↑ La gente : hispano history and life in Colorado. C. de Baca, Vincent., Colorado Historical Society. Denver, Colo.: Colorado Historical Society. 1998. ISBN 9780870815386. OCLC 40678337.


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