A Family of Agribusinesses
United States Sugar Corporation is one of America’s premier privately held agribusiness companies.

With state-of-the-art technology for both sugar manufacturing and citrus processing, U.S. Sugar practices the most efficient and progressive farming techniques available in the world. Vertical integration of our farming, processing and packaging operations makes U.S. Sugar competitive while meeting the highest standards for worker safety, food quality and environmental protection. With its headquarters in Clewiston, Florida, the Company farms over 187,858 acres in Hendry, Glades, and Palm Beach counties. U.S. Sugar has approximately 1700 employees.

U.S. Sugar is the country’s largest producer of sugar cane and refined cane sugar and is one of Florida’s major producers of oranges and orange juice products. In addition to the Company’s principal businesses of sugar and citrus, U.S. Sugar also owns a short line railroad, the South Central Florida Express.

Dependent upon weather, growing conditions and federal market allocations, U.S. Sugar produces 700,000 tons of cane sugar a year, providing nearly 10% of the sugar produced in America. Currently, the Company operates a raw sugar mill at Clewiston. The mill has the capacity to grind up to 40,000 tons of sugarcane each day during the October-April harvest season.

With an onslaught of foreign trade agreements in the pipeline, U.S. Sugar has been modernizing and streamlining its operations to increase its ability to compete on a global level. In November 2004, we announced plans for a single, modern and highly automated sugar processing operation. The Clewiston raw sugar mills will run until 2007, when the new 40,000-tons-per-day processing operation at the Clewiston site is scheduled to be fully operational.

Investing in new technology is critical to bringing our costs into line with foreign sugar producers who do not have to provide the level of wages and benefits nor comply with a host of environmental and safety regulations like the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, OSHA and others that add to the cost of doing business. While the modernization and streamlining efforts means fewer jobs for the community, our goal is to provide the maximum number of secure jobs for our employees and community into the future. As we move to higher skilled jobs in more automated environments, the jobs should provide higher wages than many of those they are replacing.

The Clewiston Refinery, adjacent to the Clewiston Mill, is the newest cane sugar refinery in the U.S. and the first fully integrated cane sugar refinery in the country. The refinery has recently been expanded to enable the Company to refine virtually all its raw sugar production. Refining operations include the production and packaging of a full spectrum of refined sugar products—from small retail bags to railcars of bulk sugar. A liquid sugar production line began full operations in 2003 -- enabling the Refinery to better meet its customers’ sugar needs. United Sugars, owned in partnership with Minnesota and North Dakota beet sugar cooperatives, markets our refined sugar products.

Our citrus company, Southern Gardens Citrus, owns one of the largest citrus groves under single ownership in the country. Over 30,000 acres of orange groves contain well over three million trees, which provide fruit to the Southern Gardens Citrus Processing Plant. The juice plant, which opened in 1994, has already been expanded several times and can process 20 million boxes of oranges a season, producing over 120 million gallons of orange juice. Setting world records in extractor productivity in seven of the last eight years, Southern Gardens is the largest bulk supplier of premium, not-from-concentrate (NFC) orange juice in the country. We are also the largest supplier of NFC juice to Tropicana.

Long considered an industry leader in environmental issues, U.S. Sugar has established many on-farm soil and water management techniques that have become models for the industry. Such practices have led to an average 50% reduction in phosphorous, easily surpassing the Everglades Forever Act’s 25% requirements. In addition, U.S. Sugar runs its raw sugar mill and Clewiston refinery on bagasse, the residual cane fiber from the milling process, making them energy self-sufficient. Sugarcane is a clean, green and renewable energy source.

As farmers and stewards of the land, U.S. Sugar is committed to Everglades restoration and to continuing efforts to improve the environmental sensitivity of its farming operations.

Sugarcane is considered one of nature’s most environmentally friendly crops because it requires little fertilizer or pesticides—particularly as compared to other land uses. Basically a giant grass, sugarcane thrives in South Florida’s sunshine and abundant rainfall. The rich muck soils surrounding Lake Okeechobee provide most of the nutrients needed to produce healthy fields of sugarcane. Likewise, our cane farms and citrus groves provide a nurturing and protected habitat for hundreds of species of wading birds—from roseate spoonbills, wood storks and great blue herons to giant egrets and white pelicans.

Since its founding more than 75 years ago, U.S. Sugar has been actively involved in the well-being and development of community. Education and health care are among its top priorities for both corporate and employee contributions. U.S. Sugar makes a variety of contributions to area schools and health care institutions -- with an eye to improving education and providing quality health care for all the citizens of this farming region.

In addition to monetary contributions, U.S. Sugar encourages active participation in community, civic, charitable and religious activities on the part of its employees. The Company’s philosophy reflects a commitment to enhancing its community for the betterment of all residents, regardless of their affiliation with U.S. Sugar. The words of our founder C. S. Mott are as true today as they were back in 1931, “We are a part of the community, and what is good for the community is good for us.”

At United States Sugar Corporation, traditional farming values are successfully combined with modern technology. The result is farming that is compatible with the environment and with the economic realities of the new millennium.