The LaSuCa sugar mill at St. John is anything but quiet during this off-season. Along with the usual repair and maintenance required between grinding seasons, the mill is swarming with workers bringing about the first phase of a multi-year expansion in the historic mill’s capacity.
Mill spokesman John Hebert told the Teche News that nearly every step in the refining process will be expanded and upgraded. New boilers, evaporators and cane handling equipment are being fabricated. The eventual result of the planned five-year project will be about a 40 percent increase in grinding and processing capacity.
Improvements now underway will allow about ten percent more cane than to be processed this grinding season than last year. However, Hebert said, there will probably be no more sugar produced than last year’s all-time record due to a drier growing season.
The geographical area served by the St. John facility will increase this year and continue to increase in coming years. More acreage of cane will be transported to the mill from out of the immediate area. No significant increase in acreage planted is expected within St. Martin Parish.
Hebert added that this expansion is perhaps the largest one undertaken for a single sugar mill in the history of the industry. Besides the equipment that is being added, improvements in technology will move refining capability ahead without enlarging the plant’s footprint.
“Our general mManager, Mike Comb, has always been very innovative when it comes to technology,” Hebert said. “This mill was already one of the most advanced and automated in the state, with a large focus on maximizing extraction.”
He said technological advances will continue to allow increases in output in the future, and the five-year expansion will provide the plant capacity to take advantage of those improvements.
Besides the mill itself, other infrastructure elements for LaSuCa’s operation at St. John are growing as well. The trucking capacity, for instance, will nearly double in the coming years.
Also, the company is moving to expand its own cane growing operation, LaSuCaFarm, which began just last year.