U.S. Sugar Corp. plans to close its 41-year-old Bryant mill just outside Pahokee, and enlarge and automate its Clewiston plant, resulting in the loss of 300 to 350 jobs by 2007, company officials said on Tuesday.

Automation is necessary to cut costs "to successfully compete in a changing sugar market with increased foreign sugar imports as a result of [the North American Free Trade Agreement] and other trade agreements," Executive Vice President Bob Buker said in a statement.

The news came as a surprise to Clewiston's mayor, Mali Chamness, but she said she understood the sugar behemoth's motives -- attempting to survive in a highly competitive environment.

"They're doing what they have to do to stay n business," Chamness said. "At least U.S. Sugar is trying to preserve other jobs rather than picking up and leaving."

U.S. Sugar said severance packages "for all those whose jobs are eliminated with this consolidation will be a subject of discussion in the upcoming union negotiations." Not all of those who will lose their jobs are union members, however, officials said.

The company owns some 196,000 acres for growing sugarcane and citrus in Palm Beach, Glades and Hendry counties and produces about 10 percent of the sugar made in the Unites States. It once employed more than 3,000 people. After the cuts planned through 2007 -- the year the Bryant Sugar House will close -- that number would drop to between 1,500 and 1,600, Senior Vice President Robert Coker said.

"We must make sure our company is positioned long-term to be among the most competitive producers of sugar in the world," Coker said. He declined to say how much the project would cost other than it would require a "substantial capital investment."
U.S. Sugar and other domestic firms have been plagued by new free trade agreements that call for increased U.S. imports of sugar.

NAFTA, for example, will completely open U.S. borders to Mexican sugar in 2008. And the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a proposed agreement between the United States and Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, is headed for debate in Congress. It would allow some 100,000 additional tons of sugar into "an already oversupplied U.S. market," Coker said.

U.S. Sugar officials said they had to make some major decisions to remain competitive as several market forces converge.

In addition to woes brought on by free trade agreements, demand for sugar has been dropping as many Americans choose low-carbohydrate foods. U.S. cane producers also face increasing competition from domestic cane substitutes and imported sweets that once were made here but now are cheaper to produce in Mexico with Mexican sugar.

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