Sucro Limited announced plans to construct a new cane sugar refinery in the Greater Chicago Area. Once complete, the new refinery will have a similar scale to the company's Lackawanna facility in Western New York. The new refinery will have value-added specialty sugar capabilities, including large grain crystals used in specialty foods and confectionery, an integrated brown sugar line, specialty liquid production and organic sugar refining capabilities. Startup and initial production are expected in 2026.

The Chicago refinery will leverage Sucro's existing property and sugar processing infrastructure at University Park, Ill. The company says the location represents the most inland cane sugar refinery in the U.S. with the capability to serve food processors and manufacturers in the Midwest with a supply of refined cane sugar and specialty sugars. Sucro expects to fund the equity portion of the facility's construction costs using internally generated cashflows.

"The U.S. sugar market is chronically short of supply, and demand is growing. This is particularly true in specialty value-added segments like large-grain crystals. Our new Chicago refinery will add much-needed domestic refinery capacity to address the demand for refined sugar and reduce the market's reliance on imports. The refinery's primary focus will be higher value specialty sugar products which are in high demand from U.S. food processors and manufacturers," says Jonathan Taylor, CEO and founder of Sucro. "The Chicago refinery will represent Sucro's third new facility in the past five years. Once the new Chicago refinery and the recently announced new refinery in Hamilton are complete, we believe Sucro will be responsible for adding more new capacity to the North American market than all other sugar refiners combined. Sucro is also unique in the industry as the only sugar refiner in North America to widely make available less processed, higher color refined granular sugar. This is the highest growth, most sought-after feature by our multinational customers looking for innovation and flexibility."