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Company type | Agricultural Marketing Cooperative |
---|---|
Industry | Agriculture |
Founded | 1899 |
Founder | Henry T. Oxnard |
Headquarters | , |
Area served | Minnesota & North Dakota |
Key people | Thomas Astrup (President & CEO) |
Products | Sugar |
Parent | United Sugars, Midwest Agri-Commodities |
Website | www |
American Crystal Sugar Company is an agricultural cooperative specializing in the production of sugar and related agri-products. American Crystal is owned by nearly 2,800 shareholders who raise approximately one-third of the nation's sugarbeet acreage in the Red River valley of Minnesota and North Dakota. As the largest beet sugar producer in the United States, the company utilizes innovative farming practices, low-cost production methods, and sales and marketing leadership to produce and sell about 15 percent of America's sugar. American Crystal operates sugar factories in Crookston, East Grand Forks, and Moorhead Minnesota; and Drayton and Hillsboro, North Dakota. The company's technical services center and corporate headquarters are also located in Moorhead.
Located in Edina, Minnesota, United Sugars Producers & Refiners Cooperative markets American Crystal's sugar to retail and industrial customers throughout the nation. Midwest Agri-Commodities Company, based in San Rafael, California, globally markets American Crystal's agri-products such as sugarbeet pulp, molasses, concentrated separated byproduct (CSB; de-sugared molasses), and betaine.
The company was founded as the American Beet Sugar Company by Henry Oxnard in 1899, who combined four separate sugar beet processing plants he had built over the previous decade into a single entity. [1] In 1890, Oxnard had established the Oxnard Beet Sugar Company in Grand Island, Nebraska. [2] The following year he built another plant in Norfolk, Nebraska, the Norfolk Beet Sugar Company, as well as working with his brother Robert to construct the Chino Valley Beet Sugar Company in Chino, California. [3] In 1897 Oxnard built the fourth factory, the Pacific Beet Sugar Company, at Oxnard, California. [2] These were the four companies that formed American Beet Sugar.
Expansion of the company continued, with construction completed on a plant at Rocky Ford, Colorado in 1901. [2]
American Beet Sugar changed its name to American Crystal Sugar in August 1934. [4]
In February 1973, the American Crystal Sugar Company ceased to be a public company when it was bought out by the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association for $50 million. [5] [6]
ACS opened its Mason City, Iowa beet sugar factory in 1917 and closed it in 1973. It had come under pressure from the Iowa Water Pollution Control Commission for discharging waste into the Winnebago River and for air pollution, but it was also attributed to financial losses, a new factory at Renville, Minnesota, and fewer acres being grown. [7]
In August 2011, 96% of American Crystal Sugar employees rejected a pact that would have increased wages 13% over five years (2.5% per year) but which would have demanded greater worker contributions to health insurance coverage and major contract language givebacks, including fewer seniority rights. After five votes over a 20-month period, 55% of the members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union Local 167G ratified a contract that closely resembled the previous four proposals. After nearly 650 employees quit over the lockout period, only about 400 reported to work following the final vote.
American Crystal Sugar Company was the third largest donor in America to Republican lawmakers who sought to block certification of the 2020 presidential election results, leading to the January 6, 2021 insurrection. [8] The first two were Koch Industries and Valero Energy.
A sugar beet is a plant whose root contains a high concentration of sucrose and that is grown commercially for sugar production. In plant breeding, it is known as the Altissima cultivar group of the common beet. Together with other beet cultivars, such as beetroot and chard, it belongs to the subspecies Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris but classified as var. saccharifera . Its closest wild relative is the sea beet.
Sucrose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of glucose and fructose subunits. It is produced naturally in plants and is the main constituent of white sugar. It has the molecular formula C
12H
22O
11.
Oxnard is a city in Ventura County in the U.S. state of California, United States. On California's Central Coast, it is the most populous city in Ventura County and the 22nd-most-populous city in California. Incorporated in 1903, Oxnard lies approximately 60 miles (97 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is by tradition an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content, but is now often produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar.
Adolph Claus J. Spreckels was a Prussian Saxony-born major industrialist in Hawai'i during the kingdom, republican, and territorial periods of the islands' history. He also involved himself in several California enterprises, most notably the company that bears his name, Spreckels Sugar Company.
The Oxnard strike of 1903 was a labor rights dispute in the southern California coastal city of Oxnard between local landowners and the majority Japanese and Mexican labor force.
A sugar refinery is a refinery which processes raw sugar from cane or sugar extracted from beets into white refined sugar.
George Albert Sinner was an American politician who served as the 29th governor of North Dakota from 1985 to 1992. He served two four-year terms and was the most recent governor of North Dakota from his party, the North Dakota Democratic–Nonpartisan League Party.
The Ventura County Railroad is a class III railroad subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming, connecting the Union Pacific Railroad in Oxnard to South Oxnard and Port Hueneme. It began operations in 1998 under RailAmerica, leasing its lines from the Ventura County Railway, owner of lines first opened in about 1905 that have remained independent of larger carriers. The railroad serves industrial areas including the Port of Hueneme and Naval Facilities Expeditionary Logistics Center at Naval Base Ventura County.
The Western Sugar Cooperative is a grower owned American agricultural cooperative originating from the Great Western Sugar Company in 1901.
The Oxnard Plain is a large coastal plain in southwest Ventura County, California, United States surrounded by the mountains of the Transverse Ranges. The cities of Oxnard, Camarillo, Port Hueneme and much of Ventura as well as the unincorporated communities of Hollywood Beach, El Rio, Saticoy, Silver Strand Beach, and Somis lie within the over 200-square-mile alluvial plain (520 km2). The population within the plain comprises a majority of the western half of the Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura Metro Area and includes the largest city along the Central Coast of California. The 16.5-mile-long coastline (26.6 km) is among the longest stretches of continuous, linear beaches in the state.
The Colonia is a neighborhood located in the central portion of the city of Oxnard, California, USA. The neighborhood was laid out by the Colonia Land Improvement Company in close proximity of the sugar factory and beet fields to house workers just east of the city's downtown business district. Long a Latino barrio, it is home to lower-income families, former resident César Chávez once lived there, also known worldwide as Boxnard because of La Colonia Youth Boxing Club, which has produced notable fighters such as Fernando Vargas, Robert Garcia, Miguel Angel Garcia, Victor Ortíz, Brandon Rios and Mia St. John.
The Amalgamated Sugar Company is an American sugar beet-refining company run on a cooperative basis. It was founded in 1897 in Ogden, Utah, and is now located in Nampa, Idaho. The company markets its sugar under the White Satin brand.
The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company was a large sugar beet processing company based in Utah. It was owned and controlled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its leaders. It was notable for developing a valuable cash crop and processing facilities that was important to the economy of Utah and surrounding states. It was part of the Sugar Trust, and subject to antitrust investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Hardwick Committee.
The Deseret Manufacturing Company was an unsuccessful venture by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1850s to process sugar beets into refined sugar. A test factory was established in an area that is now known as Sugar House, Utah.
Michigan Sugar Company is an agricultural cooperative, based in Bay City, Michigan, that specializes in the processing of beet sugar. Founded in 1906, Michigan Sugar sells beet sugar under the brand names Big Chief and Pioneer.
Henry Thomas Oxnard was a French-born, American entrepreneur and namesake of Oxnard, California and its Henry T. Oxnard Historic District. Oxnard was president of both the American Beet Sugar Company and the American Beet Sugar Association, which represents all the beet sugar factories in the United States. He and his brothers controlled five sugar factories in the United States.
A genetically modified sugar beet is a sugar beet that has been genetically engineered by the direct modification of its genome using biotechnology. Commercialized GM sugar beets make use of a glyphosate-resistance modification developed by Monsanto and KWS Saat. These glyphosate-resistant beets, also called 'Roundup Ready' sugar beets, were developed by 2000, but not commercialized until 2007. For international trade, sugar beets have a Maximum Residue Limit of glyphosate of 15 mg/Kg at harvest. As of 2016, GMO sugar beets are grown in the United States and Canada. In the United States, they play an important role in domestic sugar production. Studies have concluded the sugar from glyphosate-resistant sugar beets is molecularly identical to and so has the same nutritional value as sugar from conventional (non-GMO) sugar beets.
The sugar industry of the United States produces sugarcane and sugar beets, operates sugar refineries, and produces and markets refined sugars, sugar-sweetened goods, and other products. The United States is among the world's largest sugar producers. Unlike most other sugar producing countries, the United States has both large and well-developed sugarcane and sugar beet industries. Refined sugarcane, processed sugar beet, and high-fructose corn syrup are all commonly used in the U.S. as added sugars to sweeten food and beverages.
A beet sugar factory, or sugar factory, is a type of production facility that produces sugar from sugar beets or alternative plants to sugarcane in making refined sugar. These factories process the beets to produce refined sugar, similar to sugarcane in other regions. The process involves several steps, including washing, slicing, and extracting the sugar content through diffusion. Nowadays, most sugar factories also act as sugar refineries. The first beet sugar factory was built in 1802.