From mid-January to mid-March this sugar refinery 15km southwest of Aguadulce processes more than 6500 tons of raw sugarcane daily. The process involves thousands of workers in round-the-clock production. It's a fascinating time to visit the refinery but a tour (in Spanish) requires 24 hours' notice. A taxi costs about US$18 round trip; otherwise take any bus headed west and ask the driver to drop you at the Ingenio de Azúcar Santa Rosa (US$1, 20 minutes, every 15 minutes).
Also on the property is a replica of the original house of the mill’s first owners, the Delvalle family, built in 1911. Now the Casa Museo, it contains exhibits on the history of sugar production in the New World. All the furniture and other items on display are original.
Because the land here is hilly and rocky, the cane must be harvested by hand. Four thousand people are hired to help with harvesting and production, and they bring the cane in as fast as they can, 24 hours a day, six days a week. Around 135kg of cane enters the mill each second via a huge conveyor belt that’s continually fed from trucks coming in from the fields. By day’s end, the yield of refined sugar is around 675,000kg. All this cane is sent through grinders that resemble a stack of studded rolling pins, except that each one weighs 20 tons and is about the size of a car. They spin quickly, and the cane that passes through them is crushed flat.
