Port of Harlingen will feel impact of sugar mill closure

HARLINGEN, Texas – The black flakes coming from the South Texas skies during the fall and winter months will no longer be seen and the constant barge traffic going along the Arroyo Colorado and the Intercoastal Waterway is going to take a reduction.

People often wonder what the black flakes and where they come from. The are actually the leftovers of burned leaves carried by winds when the annual harvesting of sugar cane got under way.

The amount of barge traffic from a stretch of the Port of Harlingen to Arroyo City and the mouth of the Laguna Madre will suffer as the shipping of raw sugar from the Rio Grande Valley to outside of New Orleans grinds to a halt.

The reason for this is the imminent closure of the Santa Rosa-based Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc., the region’s only mill that has been processing the commodity for half a century.

According to a company release, the members–owned cooperative has some 126 growers from Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties. It has been processing an average of 1.5 million tons of sugar cane, producing about 160,000 tons of raw sugar and 60,000 tons of molasses each year.

The mill employed 190 full-time and some 300 part-time workers.

But, because of poor rain precipitation over the years and a lack of water released from Mexico into the Rio Grande under a 1944 treaty, the mill has ceased operations.

This is resulting in a loss of jobs for people employed at the mill as well as lost income for growers.

But others, such as the Port of Harlingen, are feeling the impact of the mill closing.

Walker Smith

For many years, the port has been storing and shipping the raw sugar to a Domino Sugar Refinery in Chalmette, La.

The tonnage shipped out the port grew from 25,000 tons back in the 1980s to more than 150,000 at the last count, according to an in-house portrait about the shallow water port.

Walker Smith, the port’s director since 2014, said the mill closure will hurt business there.

“There is going to be an impact anytime you lose a client like this one,” he said, referring to sugar mill. “Sugar accounts for about three percent of our total tonnage.”

The port handles about three million tons of products annually, a report states.

It even built a 35,000-square-foot warehouse to store the sugar back in 2008 and still has raw sugar waiting to be shipped on barges.

And although it will feel the economic pinch from losing a longtime client, the port has been diversifying its portfolio, handling today a variety of commodities.

This includes refined fuel heading to Mexico, sand, agricultural fertilizers and chemicals and other products.

Walker said the loss of the mill is going to have a significant economic impact in the Valley.

Just in payroll, the mill’s workforce was generating more than $14 million in wages and benefits.

Meanwhile, farmers are making plans for the 40,000 acres they have been planting with sugar cane in the three-county region.

Bruce Waters is a farmer from Cameron County who has been growing sugar cane near Rio Hondo. He said has not decided whether to plant cotton, grain or perhaps sesame seeds instead.

A member of the sugar mill coop for more than 15 years, Waters said sugar cane requires a lot of fertilizers and most of all, water.

But the farmland has not been adequately getting water either from the skies or from irrigation over the years.

Waters said his last sugar cane crop has been harvested and the next step is to disc the soil and get rid of roots entrenched in the soil.

Asked what he thinks about the 50-plus year old mill’s closure, he replied, saying, “There is nothing you can do or say.”

And, by the way, the last flakes produced from the 2022-2023 sugar cane season descended into the Town of Primera a little more than a month ago and will now cease, just as the sugar mill will.

Handling sugar at the Port of Harlingen

---

Photo credit: Port of Harlingen

Handling sugar at the Port of Harlingen is featured in the port’s most recent strategic plan. It states:

Sugar is the only export commodity for the Port, with an average of 30 shipments per year totaling approximately 150,000 tons. 

The raw sugar moves from Santa Rosa, Texas, to Louisiana for refining by Dominos. Sugar arrives by truck and is stored in a purpose built warehouse above the dry cargo dock. 

Most of the sugar is moved during the harvest season in early spring, and ends in April or May. The sugar typically has two loading periods per month. Generally speaking, there are no sugar barges handled during the months of August, September and October. The facility and dock handle approximately 108 barges over nine months. This may increase to 12 barges per month for 12 months, depending on demand from the refiner. 

The dock handles six barges per barge lash-up (aka barge train), two lash-ups or trains per month. Each barge takes four to five hours to load, or approximately 48 hours per train. 

The sugar is dumped and piled in the warehouse and then moved by front end loader to a fixed conveyor system where it is conveyor belted to the dock. 

There is also additional infrastructure, additional fixed infrastructure on the dock and a barge loading conveyor unit.

The barge loader is used to fill the covered standard hopper barges. A towboat is used to keep the barge flush alongside and shift it as necessary to fill the barge evenly.

The post Port of Harlingen will feel impact of sugar mill closure appeared first on Rio Grande Guardian.