Bitter reality: Candy less likely to be 'Made in US'

Candymakers are leaving the United States. Already, they're producing mints in Argentina and candy canes in Mexico. Soon, Kraft will close down its LifeSavers' factory in Holland, Mich., and move it to Quebec.

It's enough to make red, white, and blue candy lovers weep.

Thanks to rising costs and arcane farm policy, America is now being forced to choose between saving its sugar farmers and protecting its candy manufacturers. As it finalizes this year's farm bill, Congress looks certain to side with the beleaguered sugar producers, who for years have outlobbied the sugar-using companies.

Doors are closing on some of sugar, manufacturers are closing US plants and slowly moving operations across the borders – south to Mexico and Latin America, and north to Canada. Chicago, the nation's candy capital, is especially vulnerable to this turn of events.

"We want to continue manufacturing here," says Friederika Kaider, director of the city's Candy Institute, an industry retention project of the Center for Labor and Community Research.

But trends aren't promising.

"I don't know whether there will be a domestic hard-candy industry in 10 years' time," warns Greg McCormack, president of Bobs Candies Inc., an Albany, Ga., candy manufacturer that moved some 40 percent of its candy-cane production to Mexico just last year. "It's not a fun situation to be in."

For decades, Chicago's West Side claimed the factories that bespoke the nation's diverse mid-century industrial might. The area boasted a Westinghouse plant and a Playskool factory. But high costs and outmoded facilities forced those companies to close. Last year, Brach's Confections announced that it, too, would shut down its sprawling brick-faced plant by 2004, throwing some 1,100 Chicago-area employees out of work.

The company, which for years had turned out StarBrite mints, Milk Maid caramels, and Maple Nut Goodies, said it may contract out the work to manufacturers in Mexico or Argentina.

Labor costs and the need for modern facilities played a role in the company's decision. But the picture is complicated by Brach's reliance on high-priced American sugar.

For two decades, the US has supported its sugarcane growers in the South and sugarbeet producers in the North by sharply limiting imports. The policy is blatantly protectionist. But sugar farmers point out that most other countries subsidize growers, too.

The result is that many American and international consumers end up paying artificially high prices for sugar, while the remainder is dumped on world markets at rock-bottom prices.

Here in the US, consumers – including candymakers – pay at least twice the world-market price. That's why America's soft-drink makers long ago shifted from sugar to corn syrup to sweeten their beverages. Candymakers usually can't make that change, especially in high-sugar-content hard candy.

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