Industry Member Spotlight: Michigan Sugar Company Interview with Michigan Sugar Company CEO Neil Juhnke

This article appeared in the Jul/Aug 2024 issue of MiMfg Magazine. Read the full issue and find past issues online.

Michigan Sugar Company is pulling every bit of sweetness possible out of sugar beets for sugar processing and distribution, and it’s doing a significant portion of it through environmentally friendly and sustainable processes.

Founded in 1906, the Bay City-based business has four sugar beet processing factories and several packaging and warehousing facilities. In 2002, the company transitioned into a grower-owned cooperative model and, in 2004, it merged with Monitor Sugar Company. Today, the cooperative has 865 member shareholders, who also are sugar beet farmers.

The third-largest sugar beet processing company in the United States, Michigan Sugar Company produces about 1.2 billion pounds of sugar annually. Part of the company’s success, as CEO Neil Juhnke says, is due to the location.

One Skill Everyone Should Have

Empathy, the ability to see things from others’ perspectives.

Our Next Goal

Make Michigan Sugar Company the best sugar company on the planet!

“We are the only sugar beet company located east of the Mississippi River,” he says, adding that the location provides them with access to some of the “best farmland on the planet, right here in the thumb of Michigan.”

The company is also in the vicinity of some of the largest food manufacturing markets, and it doesn’t need an irrigation system for its crops, he says.

“We get enough natural rainfall to support the crop without having to irrigate it,” he says, noting that it’s a sustainable, environmentally friendly process. “We’ve been growing and processing sugar beets in this part of Michigan in this way for nearly 120 years.”

Juhnke says Michigan Sugar is on a journey to transform from a good company into a great company via world-class maintenance, reliability, employee training and skill development, utilization of enhanced technology and the implementation of innovative processes that will grow the business and the industry.

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A significant step in this journey has been the opening of the company’s molasses desugarization facility.

Producing sugar involves harvesting sugar beets, washing off the stones and dirt, slicing the beets, extracting the sugar from the slices, running the juice through a purification system, thickening the juice through an evaporation process, crystalizing the product and then separating, drying, cooling and packing the sugar.

Molasses is a concentrated byproduct of sugar beet processing but, at a certain point, crystals will no longer form, Juhnke explains. Through the desugarization process, resin-based technology is used to pull out any remaining sugar, turn it into an extract and place that extract back into the system to create more sugar.

“We can increase our sugar yield without any more acres planted, without any more tractor trips across the field, without any more applications of pesticides or herbicides or loads of sugar beets going to the factory,” Juhnke says.

Best Part of My Job

Working with great people and for the benefit of farmers.

How We’re Innovating

Primarily through continuous improvement.

Desugarization is only one of many sustainable processes that the company has employed. For example, when the sugar is extracted from the beets, the byproduct is a fibrous pulp that ends up as cattle feed, Juhnke says.

“We waste absolutely nothing,” he says. “Even the soil we wash off our beets is reclaimed and returned back to the farmland.”

More than 120 years of industry expertise coupled with an ability to stay up to date with modern innovations and technology has undoubtedly contributed to the company’s standing as a sugar production powerhouse. If the company’s current standards for business management are any indication, the future looks sweet indeed.

Michigan Sugar Company is an MMA Industry Member and has been an MMA member company since May 2018. Visit online: michigansugar.com.