Santa Terezinha (St Therese) Sugarcane Factory

In 1926, a plantation-factory transition called São Luiz (St Louis), situated at the Santa Tereza plantation in the municipality of Água Preta (Black Water), was bought by José Pessoa de Queiroz, who transformed it into a large sugarcane factory with the name Santa Terezinha in 1929.

It is located in the best agricultural area of the states of Pernambuco and Alagoas (on the border), on the banks of the Jacuípe River.

In 1929 it had 14 fields and the capacity to crush 500 tonnes of sugarcane and produce 3,500 litres of ethanol or 5,000 litres of cachaça in 22 hours.
It had 22km of railways, three locomotives and maintained a school with an average annual attendance of 60 students.

In 1930 it was already considered to be the third-largest factory in terms of capacity and production in the country, crushing 1,600 tonnes of sugarcane.

Only the Catende and Tiúma factories were larger.

In 1936, it opened the second anhydrous alcohol distillery in the State.

In the 1981-1982 harvest, the factory suffered great financial difficulties which greatly diminished its production, and in the 1982-1983 harvest it was unable to mill due to being closed down.

In 1984, it returned to operating in a very precarious fashion, then undergoing an intervention process.

Without financing for new plantings or sufficient resources to pay salaries and social obligations, the factory was shut down in 1988.

It began producing sugarcane for the Catende, Treze de Maio and Pumaty factories in Pernambuco and the Porto Rico factory in Alagoas.

The movement by the operators, employees and sugarcane suppliers to reopen the factory enabled the Instituto do Açúcar de do Álcool (Institute of

Sugar and Ethanol - IAA) to finance the reforms of the factory, which restarted its activities in the 1989-1990 harvest.

The factory underwent a leasing process, whose winning proposal was from Ricardo Pessoa de Queiroz Filho.

Recife, 7 August 2003.
(Updated on 9 September 2009).

Translated by Peter Leamy, January 2012.

sources consulted

ANDRADE, Manuel Correia de. História das usinas de açúcar de Pernambuco. Recife: FJN. Ed. Massangana, 1989. 114 p. (República, v.1)

GONÇALVES & SILVA. O assucar e o algodão em Pernambuco. Recife: [s.n.], 1929. 90 p.

MOURA, Severino. Senhores de engenho e usineiros, a nobreza de Pernambuco. Recife: Fiam, CEHM, Sindaçúcar, 1998. 320 p. (Tempo municipal, 17).

how to quote this text

Source: GASPAR, Lúcia. Santa Terezinha (St Therese) Sugarcane Factory. Pesquisa Escolar Online, Joaquim Nabuco Foudation, Recife. Available at:  <https://pesquisaescolar.fundaj.gov.br/en/>. Accessed: day month year. Exemple: 6 Aug. 2009