10/12 magazine Winter 2009 : Page 38
West Bato West Bato West Bato t Baton rouge aCreaGe: 14,000 Key properties: A suga West Baton rouge aCreaGe: 14,000 Key properties: A sugar cane plantation and mill listed on the National Register of Historic Places, 2,500 acres of woodlands, prime commercial property on La. 1, land along the Intracoastal Canal. estimated vaLue: Not available I In tHe sprIng of 2006,the owners Louisiana Green Fuels group visited the Iberia Sugar Coop on the south side ofNew Iberia, with the intention of buying it, dismantling it and shipping the equipment to South America. Instead, they ended up buying two more sugar cane processing plants, purchasing 8,000 acres of fields and leasing another 4,000 more along the 10/12 corridor. They moved their families to Lake Charles and started an alter- native fuels business. Their plan for all that property? Producing 100 million gallons a year of ethanol. LGF now owns the Iberia Sugar Mill, the notorious Lacassine Syrup Plant [which proved to be a political debacle for former Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom] and the St. James Sugar Mill. The company is in the midst of building a sucrose-to-ethanol dis- tillery at the Lacassine facility,which it hopes to have up and running in time for the next harvest. Two more 25-million-gallon-a-year ethanol facilities are planned. Look for LGF to continue buying up land along the corridor—mostly for farming.COO Roddy Hulett—a South African native whose great grandfather started the sugar industry in 38 10/12 MAGAZINE • winter 2009 y Laws and his family left th Louisiana,where they l on the west side of the He named it Cinclare Plan- keeper. ar the federal government on limits—Cinclare ground 700,000 tons of it. The firm or cane farming, but sold t to Alma Plantation. the Laws family—who own Laws & Co. and is now n Louisiana,Memphis and king to get into another ment. ged in long-term strategic ine how to develop the property. “Right here next to the river across from Baton Rouge is not quite an ideal place to have a sugar mill,” says CEO and President Matthew “Butch”Plauche Jr.,who started as a cane factory worker in 1978 and worked his way up. “We’re being encroached upon by subdivisions and more people are moving into the area and you get more complaints from the neighbors and all that.” Plauche says a Baton Rouge loop would open up quite a bit of the property for devel- opment. But the family also wants to preserve the rich history of the plantation as well. “Since it’s such a historical presence in West Baton Rouge parish,we’d like to keep it along those lines as a historical monument and develop around that,” he says. “Exactly how we do that,we’re still searching for ways.” The economic downturn may put those plans on hold for awhile. Arecent report indicated there were 3,000 lots already on the market in West Baton Rouge Parish, although Plauche thinks an upscale development might fare better. “We’re going to sit back, do our strategic plan and,when the time is right, decide what direction to go,”Plauche says. “There’s a lot of potential here. We own 2,500 acres of woodlands,which could be used for some sort of recreation. We also own land along the Intracoastal Canal. And we have prime com- mercial property on Highway 1. “Whatever we do,we just want to make sure it’s a quality development that will not decrease the value of the existing property and that the people of Brusly and WBR be proud to live next to.” his native country and who himself has been in the business for nearly 50 years—says the firm is “absolutely in expansion mode, and we’re going to continue in that mode.” The land LGF has acquired is mostly rice fields no longer in production,which they are laser leveling with a slight slope to create the proper conditions for growing sugar cane or sweet sorghum. Randal Johnson, LGF spokesman, says the firm’s work is opening up new opportunities for farmers along the 10/12 corridor. “For so long in Louisiana, the amount of sugar cane we can grow was limited by what could be sold for food as determined by the USDA,” he says. “Cane for ethanol is outside that quota. They are free to grow as much as they can. It’s another opportunity to make money.” The corridor was an obvious choice for such a company, given the history and abundance of sugar cane farming here and the access to transportation, like the interstates and ports. LGF’s mills are also located close to manufac- turing plants and other potential customers in Louisiana, and not far from the market in Houston. Louisiana Green FueLs Lake Charles aCreaGe: 12,000 Key properties: Sugar cane fields in Calcasieu, Jefferson Davis and St. James parish; mills in Lacassine and Iberia and St. James parishes. estimated vaLue: $300 million COO Roddy Hulett www.1012corridor.com t i m m u e l l e r t i m m u e l l e r
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