Florida Crystals plows east for storage space
South Florida Business Journal - by Darcie Lunsford Palm Beach Bureau Chief
Florida Crystals Corp., expecting to boost its annual sugar crop by 50,000 tons, has bought a 92,000-square-foot warehouse in Riviera Beach for more storage and distribution space.
The Palm Beach-based sugar giant closed its $2.65 million deal Nov. 18 on the former Curtis Mathes facility at 1402 W. 13th St. in Riviera Beach.
Florida Crystals' need for warehouse space comes in the wake of Talisman Sugar Corp's $133.5 million deal earlier this year to sell its 50,000 acres of farmland in western Palm Beach County to the federal government for future Everglades restoration.
The county's three remaining sugar growers, Florida Crystals, U.S. Sugar Corp. and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida are farming the former Talisman land in the meantime. The Talisman plantation was owned by Jacksonville-based St. Joe Co.
Florida Crystals is farming about 25,000 additional acres as a result of the sale, according to Jorge Dominicis, the company's vice president.
The grower, which last year produced 750,000 tons of sugar, expects to produce about 800,000 tons this year, he said.
It began harvesting sugar cane in October and will continue to do so until April.
The bulk of the raw and refined sugars produced from the cane will be stored in existing warehouses on Florida Crystals' 180,000 acres in western Palm Beach County.
What won't fit there will be moved to the Riviera Beach facility and then to the nearby Port of Palm Beach to sugar refineries along the northeast coast, Dominicis said.
The Riviera Beach warehouse, previously occupied by appliance and electronics retailer Curtis Mathes, had been on the market for about five years, said to Jeff Kelly, vice president of industrial properties for CB Richard Ellis and one of the brokers handling the sale.
"It was a very big building in a market that didn't have a lot of big tenants," Kelly said.
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