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Réunion
From Arab sailors planting cane here in the 9th century to the centrifuges of Bois-Rouge, thirteen hundred years separate the first stalk from the latest crystal — and the same volcanic island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Spice or condiment from Réunion.
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Sugar cane is believed to have arrived on the island, then uninhabited, as early as the 9th century, brought by Arab or Austronesian sailors who used it to produce alcohol. It was not truly cultivated until the 1660s, when French settlers arrived and began planting it. For a long time, it served only to produce arrack, a cane spirit, before sugar making itself truly developed in the 19th century — after the independence of Haiti (1804) deprived France of its major supplier, the Grande Avalasse cyclone (1806) devastated coffee and clove plantations, and France lost neighbouring île Maurice (1815). The first sugar mill was established in 1785; by 1834, the island already had 194 of them, and production reached 75,000 tonnes of sugar in 1862.
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La Réunion owes its cane to its very topography: young, acidic, yet fertile volcanic soils capable of retaining water support cultivation up to 900 metres in altitude. The twelve-month cane planting cycle aligns with the island's two distinct seasons — a hot, rainy austral summer prone to cyclones, and a drier, cooler austral winter that serves as the harvest period — and the plant, still young during the cyclone season from January to March, withstands it better than other crops. The island's some two hundred microclimates allow the eRcane research centre to select varieties suited to each Réunion terroir, so much so that cultivation today requires neither chemical insecticides nor fungicides — an advantage not shared by cane from competing third countries on the European market.
Industrialists in La Réunion sought very early on to modernise sugar extraction: by 1843, 72% of mills already operated on steam, rising to 87% in 1860. Two engineers, Émile Hugot and Maxime Rivière, left a global legacy there — adapting the diffusion process developed for sugar beet to cane, the first continuous vacuum pans and the first continuous centrifuges — whilst a contemporary Réunionnais, François Langreney, designed the first compartmentless continuous vacuum pan, still in service at the Bois-Rouge sugar factory. The island's research centre, founded in 1929 by the Syndicat des Fabricants de Sucre as the Station d'Essai et de Génétique de la Canne, which became CERF in 1974 and then eRcane in 2009, made La Réunion a pillar of global sugar research. The land reform of the 1960s, which divided 32,000 hectares of large cane estates into smallholdings transferred back to farmers, shaped the family model that endures today — a cane farm averaged 9.6 hectares in 2023, across more than two thousand growers. From this industrial history, only two factories remain, Bois-Rouge in Saint-André and Le Gol in Saint-Louis, owned since 2010 by Tereos Océan Indien. The sector now employs more than 14,000 people and exports over 90% of its production, mostly to continental Europe, making La Réunion Europe's leading producer of cane sugar — but a historically low harvest in 2025 (around 803,000 tonnes) highlighted the fragility of a sector facing climate hazards and competition from third countries, ahead of a forecast recovery to 1.3 million tonnes for the 2026 campaign.
On 16 October 2025, the INAO national committee for protected geographical indications, Label Rouge and traditional specialities guaranteed approved the application for PGI recognition for the name "Sucre de l'île de La Réunion". The French State then approved the product specification by an order published in the Journal officiel on 1 February 2026, prior to submitting the application to the European Commission, which recorded it in its eAmbrosia register under the status of application only. "This is a key and decisive step taken before that of European examination," stated Sylvie Lemaire, general delegate of the Syndicat du Sucre de La Réunion, welcoming "the fruit of committed partnership work" spanning four years, bringing together the entire cane-sugar sector and local partners. This would be, twenty years after Ananas Victoria de La Réunion and five years after Vanille de l'île de La Réunion, the island's third official quality mark.
Appearance
Regular crystals or lumps, classified by their colour measured in international units (ICUMSA): from white sugar, the lightest (45 IU maximum), to brown sugar, the most deeply coloured (up to 8,000 IU), via golden sugar (500 to 1,400 IU).
Aroma
Scents of cane and molasses, all the more pronounced when the sugar is brown and unrefined.
Taste
Unrefined speciality sugars retain all the aroma and flavour of the cane; white sugar, refined locally, is consumed without this fragrance, like the majority of sugar sold in Europe.
Texture
Consistent grain size, from fine, dry grains to larger crystals, depending on the type of sugar and its moisture content, which is below 0.25% for brown sugar.
the raw juice, also known as vesou, is extracted by successive pressings in a battery of mills.
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"White sugar is the sugar consumed by the majority in the European Union," unlike La Réunion, which favours its brown cane sugar, explains Sylvie Le Maire, general delegate of the Syndicat du Sucre de La Réunion. This speciality sugar, still laden with molasses and sold in 25-kilo bags on a niche market representing only 30% of the European special sugar market, is sought after by pastry chefs for cakes and jams where one wants to taste the cane rather than the simple sweetness of white sugar. It is also the raw material for Réunion rum — traditional, made from molasses, or agricole, distilled directly from fresh cane juice — which is readily found in a rhum arrangé infused with the island's spices and fruits.
No official quality mark granted to date. The INAO national committee for protected geographical indications approved the application for PGI (IGP) recognition for "Sucre de l'île de La Réunion" on 16 October 2025; the French State then approved the product specification by an order published in the Journal officiel on 1 February 2026, prior to forwarding the application to the European Commission. The European register eAmbrosia records this application under the status of APPLICATION only: protection has not yet been granted, as the European examination phase may last from six months to two years. The application is led by the Association pour la valorisation des sucres de l'île de La Réunion and the Syndicat du Sucre de La Réunion, following four years of collective work across the cane-sugar sector.
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