The Domino sugar plant in Baltimore is about to kick it into overdrive.
Bad harvests of domestic sugar beet and sugar cane crops last year led the government to increase raw sugar shipments from Mexico by 80 percent.
Processors like Domino are scrambling to keep pace with the need to refine this cargo, pushing them to full capacity for an extended run.
In order to process their share of the 1.8 million tons of Mexican sugar cane, Domino workers will skip every other weekend – working 12 days in a row.
This workweek extension, which is not yet mandatory, could last for up to nine months.
According to Steve Haley, a sugar economist for the USDA, refiners can’t typically run at full capacity for long before there are equipment breakdowns.
“One could argue it’s unreasonable,” he told the Baltimore Sun, “and there are going to be some significant problems