Druzhba Sugar Refinery

1855 - 1917

A sugar factory in the village of Khutor-Mikhailovsky, Marchikhino-Budinsky volost, Glukhovsky district, Chernihiv province of the Russian Empire was built in 1855. Initially, it was a small enterprise at which serfs worked ^[1] .

In 1861, the refinery was converted and, in addition to granulated sugar, production of refined sugar was started (in total, the plant produced up to 200 thousand pounds of sugar per year). At the end of the 1860s, a narrow gauge railway from the Voronezh-Zernovoye line was laid to Khutor-Mikhailovsky, which simplified the transportation of raw materials and the export of finished products, and contributed to an increase in production volumes. As a result, the number of plant workers was increased to 517 people ^[1] .

At that time, working conditions at the plant were difficult, the working day was 12.5 hours, wages were small (men received 5 rubles a month, and women 3 rubles a month), a system of monetary fines was in place. Most workers lived in barracks and sheds not very suitable for living ^[1] .

During the first Russian revolution, on the night of February 23, 1905, sugar factory workers and local peasants defeated the sugar factory in Khutor-Mikhailovsky and the savings of its owner, the sugar maker Tereshchenko. To suppress the speech, a cavalry detachment arrived in the village with the Chernihiv governor and the head of the gendarmerie department, 168 people were arrested and convicted ^[1] .

In 1906, the plant was restored, the working day was reduced to 10 hours, but the salary remained low. On June 17, 1906, over 300 factory workers arrived in Svessa, where, together with workers from other enterprises and peasants, a rally was held. On January 18, 1907, factory workers began a strike demanding that they remove the Cossacks from the village, increase their salaries to 10 rubles per month, introduce an 8-hour working day, and reduce the number of working days to 24 per month ^[1] .

In 1907, a Moscow-Kiev main railway line was laid through Khutor-Mikhailovsky and the station became a railway junction (which expanded the geography of sales of the plant's products). At the same time, a medical cash desk was organized at the plant ^[1] .

Before the start of World War I , 1960 workers worked at the plant (of which 640 were women), after the outbreak of war, the number of women among workers increased due to the draft of men in the army ^[1] .

1918 - 1991

On December 27, 1917, Soviet power was established at the Khutor-Mikhailovsky station (where the Council of Railway Workers was elected), on January 6, 1918 - in the village, after which a Red Guard detachment was formed from the workers of the sugar factory. Under the leadership of the factory committee, the plant was launched and on January 18, 1918 it shipped 70 thousand pounds of sugar to the troops of the Western Front of the Red Army and to Petrograd ^[1] .

Later, during the civil war in April 1918, Khutor-Mikhailovsky was occupied by Austro-German troops , who removed sugar from the factory ^[1] and remained here until November 1918. On November 19, 1918, the village was occupied by units of the 2nd Ukrainian Soviet Red Army advance on the Kharkov direction ^[2] .

The restoration of the plant began at the end of November 1918, simultaneously with the railway junction ^[1] .

In 1921, a factory club with a library was built at the enterprise (which accelerated the eradication of illiteracy among workers and local residents), then a first-aid post was opened, and on January 2, 1923, the Khutor-Mikhailovsky Sugar Plant was re-commissioned. For the sugar season 1923-1924. 270,468 centners of sugar were produced ^[1] .

In 1925-26 the plant was reconstructed and already in 1926 it produced 3347 thousand pounds of sugar (500 thousand pounds more than in the pre-war 1912). Labor productivity doubled, the number of employees was 2858 people ^[1] .

During the Great Patriotic War on October 1, 1941, Khutor-Mikhailovsky was occupied by advancing German troops , after which a German-police garrison was left here to guard the railway junction, warehouses at the railway station and sugar factory. The main forces of the garrison were concentrated at the railway station and in the fire station of the sugar factory, two outposts were located in the settlement on the north-eastern and southern outskirts ^[3] . In 1943, the retreating German troops completely destroyed the sugar factory located in Khutor-Mikhailovsky ^[4] .

In accordance with the fourth five-year plan for the restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR, the sugar factory was restored and resumed work in the fall of 1947. Later, the main products of the plant became refined sugar ^[1] .

In February 1962, a new TPP was put into operation in Khutor-Mikhailovsky (providing the possibility of increasing production volumes), and at the end of 1962, as a result of the merger of three settlements (Khutor-Mikhailovsky, villages of Zhuravka and Yurasovka), the city of Druzhba ^{[1] appeared} . After that, the company received a new name - Druzhba Sugar Refinery ^{[5] [6]} .

In 1967, an automatic refining packaging line and a conveyor for packing transportation were installed at the plant ^[1] .

In general, in Soviet times, the plant was one of the leading enterprises of the city ^{[7] [1] [5] [6] [8]} .

After 1991

After the independence of Ukraine, the state enterprise was transformed into an open joint stock company .

Later, the plant ceased to exist ^[9] and by the end of 2006 was dismantled for scrap ^[10] .