Clewiston, FL – May 16, 2008 – U.S. Sugar Corporation completed its annual sugarcane harvest in the field Thursday and the Clewiston Sugar Factory ground the last rail car of cane last night, bringing to a close the historic first season of the new, consolidated, highly automated facility. The Company harvested 162,725 acres of sugarcane, producing 6.05 million tons of cane yielding approximately 612,260 tons of raw sugar. As the Refinery continues to operate year-round, refined sugar production from cane milled during the season is estimated to be over 12 million cwt.

“This has been quite a historic accomplishment – successfully grinding all of our cane at the newly automated mill. It is particularly noteworthy considering that we ran 50 new pieces of equipment for the first time this season, railed 50% of our cane previously milled at Bryant over to Clewiston, dealt with both drought and unseasonable rain events and did this all with far less manpower,” said Robert Coker.

Primary pieces of new equipment commissioned during the ongoing harvesting and processing season included a syrup heating station, an automatic control center, four automated continuous vacuum pans and vertical crystallizers, 20 fully automated centrifugals that separate the raw sugar crystals from the thick syrup (massecuite), two sugar conveyor belts, a sugar melter, molasses scale, two 2.75 million gallon molasses storage tanks and a mud treatment station.

While commissioning the new equipment and working out the kinks slightly prolonged the season, sugar yields held up well as the harvest continued into May.

“We were approximately 70,000 tons short of our estimates due to enduring hurricane and drought impacts as well as commissioning issues in the new mill,” Coker said. “Along with dramatically rising fuel and fertilizer costs, that has a significant financial impact on our business that we hope to improve next season.”

“However, we are extremely proud of the work that our employees did this season and our Refinery is on pace to set numerous records this year and the factory’s power plant, operating on clean, renewable cane biomass, operated so efficiently that we sold a record amount of surplus power to the electric grid. Along with today’s final passage of the Farm Bill, we are looking forward to next season operating the world’s best sugar factory,” said Coker.

U.S. Sugar’s state-of-the-art sugar factory is the result of a project, termed “Breakthrough” for its dramatic consolidation and transformation of the Company’s two older raw sugar milling operations, incorporates the best sugar technology from around the world. Initiated in October 2005, it was at one time the largest private industrial construction project in the United States. The project was completed in three, one-year phases concurrent with ongoing harvest and milling activities. Phase III, which included the demolition of 90 major pieces of equipment, installation of 262 new pieces of equipment and 284,000 construction man-hours, was completed just before the harvest began on October 8, 2007.

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