Products sugar Founded 1903 | Website www.westernsugar.com Area served Colorado | |
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Headquarters Denver, Colorado, United States Type of business Agricultural marketing cooperative | ||
The Western Sugar Cooperative is a grower owned American agricultural cooperative.
Its origins date from 1903 when Charles Boettcher founded the Great Western Sugar Company and opened a sugar beet plant in Loveland, Colorado and another in Greeley, Colorado. When the Utah Sugar Company approached Great Western Sugar Company in 1902, the companies agreed to allow Utah Sugar to expand into Idaho, provided Utah Sugar didn't expand into Colorado. This was likely on behalf of Henry Osborne Havemeyer, whose American Sugar Refining Company owned 50% of both companies. The Loveland plant closed in 1977, when the company was purchased by the sugar firm Tate & Lyle, at which time the name was changed to the Western Sugar Company. In 2002, more than 1000 sugar beet growers purchased the company, creating the grower owned cooperative.
The organization is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. It has five refineries, located at Fort Morgan, Colorado, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Torrington and Lovell, Wyoming, and Billings, Montana.
In May 2015 the company announced it would be ending production at the Torrington site and would only use that site for storage. As such it plans to reduce the workforce at its Torrington site from 76 staffers to just 6. The change should take effect late 2016.