JEANERETTE, La. (KLFY) -- There are only 11 sugar mills in Louisiana, and H.A. Patout in Jeanerette is one of them.
Randy Romero, the CEO of H.A. Patout, said the harvest season lasts from September to mid-January.
"From the farmers in the field, to producing the crop, to ultimately making the final product, to get to the refinery is a process that I believe most people, even in our local area, don't really understand the magnitude and what it takes to make all that functional," Romero said.
Romero breaks down the process.
"When the cane's coming in, we take some sample of quality to determine what the sugar yield would be. Then we take that cane, we dump it on cane tables," he said.
Then, they open the cells to extract the juice.
"We press the juice from the cane material, and then from that the bagasse is burnt in the boilers to produce steam. The juices go through a clarification process in the evaporation process where we use steam to really boil the juice to get a syrup," Romero said.
"Basically, we're removing the water," he continued.
The sugar is crystalized, Romero said, and they separate the sugar from the molasses.
"The raw sugar goes into warehouses, or it goes into barges or trucks to be delivered to refineries," Romero said.
Romero said when the refinery receives the raw product, it melts it remove all the impurities and remaining molasses to produce refined sugar, which is 100% pure and white.
"We have capacity to produce about 240,000 to 250,000 tons," Romero said. "And we produce about 75,000 tons of molasses."
With around 800 trucks of cane stalk coming in daily during harvest season, the mill operates 24/7.
"Our industry is a big part of the south Louisiana economy. Our farmers today, we grow cane in a lot of areas that have been pressured because of development, whether it's commercial or residential." Romero said. "We work hard to be very safe in our communities where we're harvesting and trucking cane. That's very critical."
"We have a really bumper crop ahead of us and hopefully with good weather throughout the harvest season, we will succeed in having a really good harvest," Romero said.
