Due to a silo fire, Domino Sugar Plant was shutdown.
Kansas City A fire in one of the silos at the 111-year-old Domino Sugar plant in Chalmette, Louisiana, caused its closure in the afternoon of August 27, local news reports said.
According to reports from the local press, the fire started during the plant’s restart operations at approximately 4:00 p.m. Central Time in one of its ten-story silos and quickly spread to another silo. The reason of the fire was still being looked into, even though there was no indication of an explosion. Refined sugar was reportedly stored inside the silos.
The three-alarm fire was contained in around two hours. Approximately 130 workers were securely removed from the plant. Local parish officials stated that everyone was present and there had been no reports of injuries.
It is unknown when operations at the plant will be able to resume, according to a Domino source. It’s one of the biggest refineries on the planet.
Before Hurricane Laura made landfall to the west, close to the Louisiana–Texas border, early on August 27, plant operations had been suspended as a precaution. Both the Domino factory and the Louisiana Sugar Refining, LLC refinery in Gramercy, Louisiana, which remained open during the hurricane, escaped damage.
The detriment of a significant refinery coincides with a shortage of spot sugar in the latter stages of the 2019–20 marketing year, which concludes on September 30. The weather in Louisiana limited the amount of sugarcane produced, and an early freeze prevented thousands of acres of sugar beets from being harvested in 2019. As a result, the total amount of sugar produced domestically in 2019–20 (beet and cane) was 11% less than in 2018–19.
The impact of the facility’s production loss is still unknown, but sugar prices had been steadily rising over the previous few weeks due to the fact that cane refiners had committed to selling most of their September through December 2020 supply and that beetroot processors had sold about 80% or more of their potential 2020–21 beetroot sugar production.
Together with C&H Sugar, Redpath Sugar, Tate & Lyle Sugars, and Sidul, Domino is a member of the ASR Group. Florida Crystals Corp. and the Florida Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative are the owners of ASR Group. In 2001, Domino became a part of ASR, which was formerly known as American Sugar Refining.