Madeiran Sugar Manufacturing Company

Only in the last thirty years has the spirit of association put down a few feeble roots in this ungrateful soil of Madeira, where major industrial, commercial and agricultural ventures have likewise failed or dragged out an existence almost always beset by difficulties of every kind. There are many examples, and among them the foundation of the Madeiran Sugar Manufacturing Company (Companhia Fabril de Açúcar Madeirense) stands out conspicuously.

In 1852 Oidium Tuckeri had wrought the greatest havoc in the Madeiran vineyards and reduced wine production to very limited proportions. A terrible economic crisis followed, which is regarded as one of the greatest calamities ever to have struck this archipelago. Thoughts soon turned to trying new crops. Sugar cane, which had ceased to be grown in Madeira only temporarily and which in past ages had been one of the island’s best sources of revenue, came to be cultivated more intensively, and within a short time it became a new and powerful source of wealth.

The development of this important and profitable crop called for a matching industry for the manufacture of sugar and the distillation of spirits. Here in Madeira this industry had always been very deficient, and at the time we are referring to it was wholly unfit to meet the needs of the moment. It was then that Dr João da Câmara Leme Homem de Vasconcelos, perhaps Madeira’s most illustrious son, came forward with the bold initiative of founding a large industrial establishment designed to convert the raw material of sugar cane into sugars and spirits, using the best processes then in use, especially in France.

It was on 27 June 1866 that the foundations were laid for the company that was to carry out this worthy enterprise. A decree of 10 April 1867 approved the statutes of the Madeiran Sugar Manufacturing Company and authorised the establishment of its manufacturing and industrial plant. Various and at times insurmountable difficulties arose, and only on 20 July 1870 did Dr Câmara

Leme leave Madeira to commission the construction of the apparatus and machinery for the new factory. On 23 March 1873 the great industrial establishment was solemnly and definitively inaugurated, with the utmost pomp, in a ceremony presided over by the diocesan prelate and our illustrious fellow countryman Dom Aires de Ornelas e Vasconcelos.

The new enterprise did not live up to general expectations. Serious errors of administration, and still more a disloyal and relentless war waged against the company’s management, in which local politics played its part, brought down within a few years the grand initiative of Dr João da Câmara Leme, later Count of Canavial. It is well to stress here that, despite everything that was said in the press and outside it, Dr Câmara Leme emerged unscathed from the quagmire of accusations and slanders into which some sought to drag the integrity of his distinguished name.

Several pamphlets were published, and many questions relating to the operation and administration of the Madeiran Sugar Manufacturing Company were debated in the newspapers.