A cooperative of Northwest sugar beet growers has completed its $266 million buyout of Amalgamated Sugar Co., officials announced.
"We expect to hit the ground running with present management and top-notch plants," George Grant, chairman of the Snake River Sugar Co., said in a statement.The cooperative's acquisition of the company with sugar processing plants in Paul, Twin Falls and Nampa, Idaho, and Nyssa, Ore., was finalized last Tuesday, and Grant immediately turned the chairmanship over to Terry Ketterling of Mountain Home.
Amalgamated, which was owned by Valhi Inc. of Houma, La., will remain headquartered in Ogden. In addition to the processing plants, it operates storage and distribution facilities in Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
The financial aspects of the transaction were agreed to a month ago. The growers' equity payments, $82 million in all, were closed into an escrow account.
To form the cooperative, participating farmers who grow beets on 205,000 acres in Idaho, Oregon and Washington pledged $50 per acre up front and another $350 an acre later.
Snake River Sugar attorney Randon Wilson said it was the biggest cooperative ever formed in the country from the ground up. Other larger ones resulted from mergers.
While ownership has changed, Amalgamated employees will continue operating the processing plants, and their union will remain intact. Ten key managers also stayed on, making the most noticeable change where beets are grown in the future.
Wilson said there has been a shift within the cooperative to more growers in eastern Idaho. That creates problems because the beets will be grown farther from the factories, increasing costs.
But transportation is not a new problem. Aberdeen-area growers have been shipping sugar beets for several years and the company commonly moves them between its four factories.