An independent editorial resource on the Dominican Republic's sugar industry — see our methodology & sourcing.
COMPANY PROFILE · LA ROMANA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Central Romana Corporation
Founded in 1912, Central Romana is the Dominican Republic's largest sugar producer and one of the country's largest private employers — a single company whose agricultural land, mill, and tourism developments now define the economy of the southeast.
1912
founded
La Romana
headquarters
Fanjul family
ownership since 1984
~166,000 acres
under cane cultivation
— OVERVIEW
The dominant company in Dominican sugar
Central Romana Corporation, Ltd. is an agro-industrial and tourism company based in La Romana, in the southeastern Dominican Republic. By most industry estimates it is responsible for roughly 60–70% of the country's total sugar production, depending on the crop year and whether the figure is measured in raw cane or refined sugar — making it by far the largest of the four mills still operating in the country.
The company describes its own scale this way: over 166,000 acres planted with sugarcane, a mill capable of grinding more than 20,000 tons of cane a day, and a refinery producing an average of roughly 1,000 tons of refined sugar every 24 hours during the harvest (company figures). Independent industry data for the 2016–17 season put Central Romana's output at 232,558 metric tons of sugar, about 61% of the national total for that season.
Beyond sugar, Central Romana has diversified since the late 1970s into tourism and real estate, most visibly through the Casa de Campo resort, La Romana International Airport, and the Altos de Chavón artisan village — all built on company land and, in the company's own account, cross-subsidized by the sugar business in its leaner years.