American Sugar Refining (ASR) has announced that its plant on the waterfront at 1 Federal St. in Yonkers will be closing at the end of the year. The company’s Domino brand is primarily made in the Yonkers refinery along with refineries in Baltimore and Chalmette, Louisiana.
ASR said that the Yonkers closing is part of several changes it is making in its operations.
“Staying ahead of evolving customer demands is essential to maintaining our competitive advantage,” said Doug Romain, ASR’s senior vice president and COO. “Our multi-year strategy includes major investments in acquisitions, new facility construction, expansions and modernization of existing assets as well as capital and process improvement projects that are making our operations and supply chain network even stronger.”
ASR said that its strategy includes operating plants that can be more flexible production facilities and that are strategically located to best serve its customers and deliver sweetener products when needed by customers.
ASR points out that it acquired the Rochester-based sweetener company, ingredientsPLUS last year, which has production facilities in Lakeville, New York and Landisville, Pennsylvania, to service the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. ASR is investing in an expansion to double the size of its Buffalo plant.
ASR also transitioned its Chalmette Refinery in Louisiana, and its Baltimore Refinery into continuous operations to gain increased operational efficiencies and improve sustainability.
“Throughout our history, we have made considerable investments and operational changes to meet our customers’ sweetening needs,” said Rob Sproull, a company senior vice president. “These recent changes are simply an extension of our continuous improvement journey to provide exceptional customer value and service. We will continue to operate large cane sugar refineries across the U.S. with the capacity to meet our customers’ cane sugar requirements. And, now, we’re further complementing the capabilities of our refineries with smaller, more flexible operations to effectively service our customers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic U.S. geographies.”
In May of 2022, American Sugar celebrated the first arrival at the Yonkers refinery of its newly constructed 450-foot-long barge Knot Refined. It was the first ocean-going, dry cargo barge of its size built in the United States in about two decades. The barge has made round trips from the Port of Palm Beach in Florida to ASR’s Yonkers and Baltimore refineries.
The Yonkers refinery typically has received 40 barge deliveries a year, resulting in about 515,000 tons of raw sugar being brought to the plant annually. The approximately 300 workers at the plant had refined and packaged the sugar for shipment to customers. Eight packaging lines at the plant handled more than four million pounds of sugar per day.
