CLEWISTON - No doubt about it, sugar cane is a locally grown product, with close to 400,000 acres of the tall grass cultivated in Florida, the bulk of it in Palm Beach County.

But the experts who know how to squeeze every drop of juice out of that cane and turn it into sugar crystals are scattered over the world.

So are the sources for technology and the highly specialized equipment.

So, when U.S. Sugar Corp. decided to embark on a project called Breakthrough, a $100 million-plus expansion and modernization of its old 1927 Clewiston Sugar Mill, it brought those experts, many of them mechanical and chemical engineers who have worked in the sugar industry in more than 30 countries, to its headquarters in Clewiston.

The three-year project is two-thirds complete, with the third phase - completing the refurbished sugar-boiling house - scheduled for October, said Arno Jansen, 45, project manager, who is originally from South Africa.

Before heading the project, Jansen was chief executive officer of Schaeffer Global Group in Baton Rouge, La.

In early 2004, the company assembled a team of 20 people it called the Technology Forum whose members had a combined 582 years of sugar industry experience, Jansen said.

They spent two weeks mapping out the process of building a new plant and determining which technology to use.

"The technology is from Brazil, South Africa, Louisiana, Finland and France," Jansen said during a tour of the company's mill and refinery on 200-plus acres. "A lot of the guys here are from South Africa, Europe, the U.K."

The mill, which will grind 38,000 to 40,000 tons of cane a day, will be the biggest in the country and the third-largest in the world, behind mills in Brazil and Thailand, Jansen said.

Its construction is unique in that the expansion is being done around its existing mill, which is being kept operating during the project, he said.

"The challenge was to design, fabricate and construct it all at the same time," Jansen said.

A group of 78 people worked on the project's design phase. Construction began in 2005 at the site, which has had as many as 800 construction workers a day.

To stay in business in the face of more sugar imports, U.S. Sugar wanted to become the nation's most cost-efficient sugar producer.

A recent study by Oxford, England-based LMC International Ltd., found that Florida was the 18th-lowest-cost producer of sugar when compared with 107 cane and sugar beet-producing countries, said U.S. Sugar spokeswoman Judy Sanchez.

"This will make us the lowest-cost producer in Florida and the U.S.," Sanchez said of the expanded mill.

The company wanted to be able to compete with low-cost producers such as Brazil, Thailand and India, where labor costs are much lower and environmental standards less stringent.

That meant automation and fewer jobs. The company's Bryant mill, in operation since 1963 at Canal Point outside Pahokee, will be closed when it wraps up its final season this year.

All the company's milling operations will be consolidated at the Clewiston mill, resulting in a 60 percent reduction in the milling workforce, from 570 employees at the two mills to 226, said Neil Smith, U.S. Sugar's vice president for sugar manufacturing and a chemical engineer.

"If you stay static, the cost of production will kill you and put you out of business," said Smith, 46. "Because of sugar allocations, you can't sell more sugar. We had two factories. We decided combining the two would be the most cost-efficient."

Automation is evident at the mill's control room, which five employees run with 20-plus computers and several overhead video screens enabling them to monitor and control the operation.

"The sugar mill and the refinery are run from this room," Jansen said. "The old plant had a lot of people walking around. They would have been manually checking things. Now it's done from here."

The company's push toward increased mechanization and technology is indicative of the U.S. sugar industry's effort to remain competitive, said Dalton Yancey, executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Florida Sugar Cane League.

There's been consolidation and vertical integration throughout the industry during the last four years, he said.

"You used to be able to grow your way into efficiency. Now you have to build your way into efficiency through better processes," he said.