Western Sugar Cooperative linked to the Red River Valley

BILLINGS, Mont. -- Western Sugar Cooperative of Denver, Colo., has some key links with the sugar industry in the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota.

Western Sugar is one of the farmer-owned cooperatives that have dominated the beet sugar industry since the early 2000s. Rodney Perry recently was named the new president and CEO for the Denver-based co-op. He started duties in April, replacing Indur Mathers, the only president the Western Sugar co-op had ever had.

Perry came to Western Sugar from Bunge Unlimited, the global agribusiness and food company. Mather had been a former chief financial officer for Tate & Lyle, which sold the company to the farmers in 2002.

Kent Wimmer, Western Sugar's manager of shareholder relations and government affairs, describes the move toward vertical integration as historic.

"From a national point of view, the farmers stepped forward and bought the companies from stock companies. They took responsibility and obligations from the seed to the grocery store."

History at-a-glance:

1901: Great Western Sugar Co., owned by Charles Boettcher and partners, builds its first sugar mill in Loveland, Colo. It adds facilities in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

The Great Western Railway was organized in 1901 to serve the beet industry and towns in northern Colo.

1967: Colorado businessman Billy White purchases Great Western.

1974: Hunt Brothers of Texas purchase Great Western.

1985: British sugar company Tate & Lyle purchases the company and names it Western Sugar Co.

2002: On April 30, 2002, the co-op finalizes its purchase of the company. Western Sugar would operate sugar processing in Scottsbluff, Neb., Lovell and Torrington in Wyoming, Billings, Mont., and Fort Morgan, Colo.

Western Sugar continues to lease its Torrington beet processing plant from American Crystal Sugar Co. in the Red River Valley.

Larry Steward served as president and chief executive of Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative in Wahpeton, N.D., from 1990 to 2000, after being a vice president of administration for Western Sugar Co.

The Western Sugar co-op, however, chose Mather as its new president and CEO when it was purchased from Tate & Lyle.