For century-old sugar mill, technology rules

Greg Nolan, general manager at Lafourche Sugars, points to a series of screens that allow him to monitor all activity at the sugar mill.

John Harper/Staff
Published: Sunday, November 3, 2013 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, November 1, 2013 at 11:58 p.m.

On the outside, sugar mills look like old-fashioned, industrial-era structures — steam-belching, gear-clanking behemoths that seem not so different than they did in the days of sickle-wielding hand-harvesting farmers.

On the inside, however, a different story is told as technology becomes increasingly integral to the mills' strategic survival.

Lafourche Sugars on Leighton Quarters Road in Thibodaux is one of 11 surviving sugar mills in Louisiana today. On paper, the mills are a dying and endangered breed. Eighteen years ago, there were 20 such mills and 40 years ago there were nearly 40.

General manager at Lafourche, Greg Nolan, has a poster in his office with pictures of about a dozen south Louisiana mills.

“This one's gone, that one's gone,” he said, pointing to each familiar photo. “That one, that one, that one, all gone.”

In a period of changing times and increasing economic pressure, it has been the mills that have made technological advancements, like Nolan's, that have survived the time. The devil of these technological advancements is that it has made it increasingly difficult for the mills to adjust to fluctuations in price.

“Over time, as they improve the technology in those mills, all of that capital improvement is more expensive, and so over the years mills have had to grind more tons in a season to lower the cost per pound of sugar,” said Mike Salassi, an LSU professor who specializes in crop production economics. “That means the larger, more efficient sugar mills are going to stay in business, and the smaller, less efficient are going to go out of business.”

Each sugar mill in Louisiana is producing around four times the gross tonnage of raw sugar that it was 20 years ago.

It is the efficiency that comes from minimizing waste at every stage of the manufacturing process that keeps Lafourche Sugars, an average-sized mill that churns out 100,000 tons of sugar per week, in business. By comparison, in 1937 the same mill produced 60,000 tons of sugar per year.

Nolan, who in September was named King Sucrose for the Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival in New Iberia, learned his trade as a chemist for Supreme Sugars, a role he said he stumbled upon by accident. His expertise in the technical aspects of the business has earned him accolades

In the midst of all the steam whistle gasps, gurgling vats of sugar syrup and rivers of mud that flow through the mill like a scene out of a vintage film, Nolan stands in front of an array of computer screens. From multiple points in the factory, Nolan and his mill workers and scientists can read data on every piece of machinery in the factory.

When it comes to troubleshooting problems and making sure nothing gets lost in the process, technology has changed everything.

“It now takes us minutes to solve a problem that just years ago would have taken weeks,” Nolan said. “We probably have more stuff in our control room than NASA had when it put people on the moon.”

Before, if something went awry in the process, finding out the problem meant talking to people in the factory.

Two years ago, Lafourche Sugars became the first Louisiana sugar mill to generate and sell surplus power that is generated from the steam produced by the factory's massive boilers. The boilers burn bagasse, the fiber material left over from the sugar cane, and the steam produced can power around 1,500 homes.

The fact that the factory uses no fossil fuel gives sugar the distinction of being one of the only truly “green” industries, Nolan said.

But for Nolan and Lafourche Sugars, it's just one more angle on survival in a business that is becoming increasingly costly not just for the mills but for the farmers who supply them. Because raw cane has to be milled within eight to 12 hours of harvest, the farmers depend on the mills to sell the sugar to the open market. That keeps farmers and mills intertwined in a relationship of utter necessity.

With cane farmers uncertain about their ability to cover costs in the near-term, Louisiana mills could be short on supply should some cane farmers choose to reduce the amount they spend on planting sugar. Nolan, however guarded, remains optimistic that his business will find new ways to keep Louisiana's billion-dollar sugar industry grinding into the future.

Nolan said a partnership between Louisiana Sugar Refining, which buys and refines Lafourche's raw sugar products, and Cargill Corp. will allow more precise quality control and ultimately even more efficiency.

The tide of consumers is also turning from artificial sweeteners and manufactured sugar alternatives back to plain, natural sugar.

“The trend is moving to natural,” he said. “Nothing about corn syrup is natural. They won't let you into a corn syrup factory without a full body protective suit. Here, everything is about smelling and tasting.”


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