Sweet tour
Sugar House offers look inside
By MARY SUE IAROCCI

 

American Sugar Refining Inc. has found itself in a paradoxical position.

After being a self-described good neighbor for some 107 years on the Yonkers waterfront, it recently said it might not be a good neighbor to a residential high-rise proposed for an adjacent piece of land.

The noise and smells associated with the manufacturing process might cast the refiner in a bad light once the high-rise is up and tenants move in. With that in mind, plant representatives at a recent City Council meeting raised their concerns.

The council responded by imposing a May 30 deadline by which time the refinery must present its results of an environmental and air-quality study.

“We are working as quickly as we can to get it completed,” said Lael Paulson, plant manager. “We are doing our best to try and get all that testing done.”

Paulson took time out last week to conduct a tour of the plant as part of Yonkers Business Week. It offered anyone interested a chance to see the inside of one of the oldest businesses in the city.

The refinery is on 32 acres along the Hudson River. The high-rise residential project has been proposed by Struever Fidelco Cappelli on land just south of the plant. The residential project is part of the developer’s $1.6 billion redevelopment project of the city’s downtown.

The tour started on the dock, where two floating cranes lift raw sugar off barges from Florida and foreign points of origin.

Next, the sugar is dropped into a raw sugar shed, where it sorted waiting to be processed.

Next, the sugar goes to a wash station, and then to the clarifying station to remove insoluble materials.

Then it goes to granular activated carbon station for decarbonization, similar to water purification.

Then it goes to crystallization, where the sugar is boiled or crystallized under vacuum then to the spinning and drying process.

The final step is packaging and storage.

Granulated, powdered, brown “soft” sugar, and liquid sugar.

Liquid sugar is used for industrial purposes; it can be used for anything from soft drinks to ice cream.

According to Paulson, the plant manager, liquid sugar customers include candy companies, ice cream companies, baking companies “any industry that uses sugar, and that’s a lot.”

The sugar refinery has 285 employees, 30 percent of which are Yonkers residents, and an annual payroll of $20 million.

The facility produces 4 million pounds of sugar per day.

Yonkers is the corporate headquarters for American Sugar Refining Inc., which was born in 2002. It has had many different names and owners since the facility was built in 1901.

“The plant is not really set up for easy touring, but we’re going to try and work on that,” said Paulson, who said customers frequently come for tours and there were 23 people who took the tour on May 6.

Pictures are not allowed inside the facility.

“We’re looking to get involved in the community,” Paulson said, explaining that the refinery is interested in forming an internship program for high school students.

 

 

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