Greeley – The 104-year-old plant of the Western Sugar Cooperative has been put up for sale with an asking price of $14.2 million.
The property includes the factory, which has processed sugar from around northern Colorado for a century, more than 200 acres and water rights, said Kent Wimmer, a Western Sugar spokesman.
The cooperative’s board decided to sell the plant a few months ago, blaming in part the cost of running it on natural gas.
Western Sugar operates factories in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Montana. It added a plant in Torrington, Wyo., just before it shut down processing at the Greeley plant in 2002. The building has largely been used to store sugar beets awaiting transport to a Fort Morgan plant, as well as sugar.
Greeley Mayor Tom Selders said the city is looking into the possibility of buying at least some of the water that is available with the factory’s sale.
“As you know, we have a long- range plan to buy another 6,000 acre-feet of water over the next few years,” he said.
The Great Western Sugar Co. was founded in the early 20th century by Charles Boettcher and various partners, who built the company’s first plant in 1901 in Loveland. The company soon added plants in Windsor and Eaton and expanded to other states.
In 1985, the British sugar company Tate & Lyle bought the company and changed its name to the Western Sugar Co. In 2002, more than 1,000 sugar-beet growers in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana formed the cooperative and bought the company for $62 million.
Bernie Blach of Realtec said the plant would be ideal for ethanol or biofuel production.
“It’s an industrial site with rail access, and there’s just not much of that available anymore,” Blach said.
