A Sweet Relationship
L
ouisiana Sugar Refining, LLC (LSR), a Turner Industries maintenance site since 2011, is located along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in Gramercy, Louisiana. It is the first operating sugar refinery in the United States to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places and traditions run deep in the community where it is located. Many LSR and Turner employees are third, fourth or even fifth generation workers, including LSR General Manager and CEO Larry Faucheux who is a third generation employee as is Turner Site Superintendent, Ryan Kliebert. A group of financiers from Gramercy Park, New York, founded the town of Gramercy, Louisiana in 1895 when they built a sugar
mill there to process sugar from nearby Golden Grove Plantation. The original refinery, called the Colonial Sugar Refinery, was built in 1902 to supply the U.S. market with granulated sugar. Like many other industries at the turn of the century, the company town offered employees housing, schools, a church and recreation. LSR completed a new $190 million state-of-the-art facility five years ago on the grounds of the old sugar refinery and the company restored 15 of the original homes built on the site and converted them into offices to maintain some of the history while moving forward. “LSR is a good blend of the old with the new,” Faucheux said. “It’s the newest sugar refinery in the world and the most au-
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