Bay City, Michigan – Michigan Sugar Company this week completed a share redemption program through which the cooperative’s grower-owners in Ontario, Canada, sold back 3,582 shares, reducing Canadian acres for planting sugarbeets from 10,898 acres to 7,316 acres – or nearly 33 percent.
Following the redemption program, Michigan Sugar Company now has 57 shareholders remaining in Ontario’s Dover growing region, which is made up of Kent and Lambton counties.
Overall, the redemption program reduces Michigan Sugar’s total planting acres by about 2.27 percent.
Michigan Sugar Company will soon conclude its 2024-2025 sugarbeet slicing campaign and shortly thereafter, its grower-owners will begin planting this year’s crop.
“As always, we are excited to finish our annual sugarbeet slicing campaign at our factories and looking forward to getting our next crop of sugarbeets in the ground,” said Michigan Sugar Company President and CEO Neil Juhnke. “We wish our factory employees a safe and strong finish to campaign and our growers a safe and successful planting season.”
Michigan Sugar Company’s roughly 865 grower-owners plant and harvest up to 140,000 acres of sugarbeets each year in 17-20 Michigan counties, as well as Ontario, Canada. Those beets are sliced at the factories and turned into about 1.3 billion pounds of sugar annually. The sugar is sold to industrial, commercial and retail customers under the Pioneer brand.
Michigan Sugar Company is the third largest of eight sugarbeet processing companies in the United States and Michigan is one of 11 states where sugarbeets are grown in the country.