Jamaica was discovered by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage on May 5, 1494 when he landed on the north coast at Santa Gloria, present day St. Ann's Bay.  Spanish settlers started arriving at Santa Gloria in 1509 where they established Sevilla La Nueva, the first European settlement and first capital of Jamaica. At Sevilla La Nueva, later called St. Ann's Bay, the settlers searched mainly for gold which they never found.  Instead, they began to cultivate sugarcane which they did for approximately one hundred forty five years.  Francisco de Garay, the second Governor of Jamaica, relocated the settlement a short distance away from the initial site in 1518 and renamed it simply Sevilla.  There he built the first sugar mill on the island and by the early 1520s was producing one hundred fifty tons of sugar annually. In 1534 the town of Sevilla was relocated to Villa de la Vega (Spanish Town) on the other side of the island.  This was to be Jamaica's second Spanish capital.  Some Spaniards, probably with their African slaves, continued to occupy the initial site which in the end, was attacked by French corsairs and its remaining inhabitants hung in 1554.

On May 10, 1655 as the result of the British Invasion of Jamaica, the Spaniards surrendered the island, freed their slaves, later called Maroons, and left for Cuba.  Jamaica was formally ceded to England in 1670 as the result of the Treaty of Madrid together with the Cayman Islands.  It gained its independence from Great Britain in 1962. After the English took control of Jamaica in 1655, aside from the commercial and buccaneer activities of famous privateers like Christopher Myngs and Henry Morgan from Port Royal, the English settlers began cultivating tobacco, Indigo and cocoa.  These crops soon gave way to sugarcane which became the main agricultural product grown on the island. 

In 1670, Captain Samuel Hemmings of the conquering army, received a two thousand five hundred acre tract of land which included the earlier Spanish sites of Sevilla La Nueva and Sevilla. This property, known as the New Seville Sugar Plantation, was the first sugar estate in Jamaica.  The property which includes the New Seville great house built by Hemmings in the 1670s, a three to four hundred acre sugar plantation and factory and warehouses and wharves on the waterfront, was submitted as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2009.

By 1673 there were fifty seven sugar estates in Jamaica, number that grew to four hundred thirty by 1739.  In 1750 the world's greatest sugar exporters were Saint-Domingue with 60,000 m.t. and Jamaica with 36,000 m.t., together accounting for roughly half of all the Caribbean production of 200,000 m.t., the rest coming from small islands in the West Indies.  In 1805 Jamaica was the major producer of sugar in the world when output reached approximately 101,200 m.t. of muscovado sugar, but this high level of production did not last long.

Jamaica is not part of the Lesser Antilles, it is one of the Greater Antilles.  Being one of the larger islands, sugar plantations were numerous and spread throughout the island mainly in the flat coastal regions.  Its expansive territory allowed it enough forest area for timber and pasture lands for raising animals and to produce crops other than sugar.  Therefore, plantations in Jamaica had available locally much of the resources they needed. However, all was not rosy in Jamaica in 1697 when writer Ned Ward arrived in Jamaica seeking new opportunities in the West Indies.  Upon his return to England the following year he published a pamphlet titled A Trip to the West Indies.  Jamaica, he wrote, was

"Sweating Chaos".  The climate was deadly: "As Sickly as a Hospital, as Dangerous as the Plague."  Nature itself was also ill, producing wild disorders such as hurricanes and earthquakes.  The food was bizarre and disgusting: the planters’ favourite, the spicy Africa-originated pepperpot, was like consuming brandy mixed with gunpowder, "an excellent Breakfast for a Salamander; the local ‘Cussue’ apple was ‘so great an Acid … that by Eating of one, it drew up my mouth like a Hens Fundament".  The pork was "luscious", but, Ward warned, caused scurvy and leprosy.  "A Broken Apothecary will make there a Topping Physician; a Barbers Prentice, a good Surgeon; a Bailiffs Follower, a passable Lawyer; and an English Knave, a very Honest Fellow."[1]   

The Jamaican sugar industry is today the oldest continually operating industry on the island and is the third largest export product (8%) after alumina (44%) and bauxite (20%).  However, approximately 40% of sugar production is absorbed by the domestic market.  In 1999 it employed about thirty six thousand people including some fifteen thousand independent sugarcane growers.  It is the industry with the largest number of workers on the island, about 4% and 18% respectively of all active and agricultural working population. The number of operating sugar factories in Jamaica which in 1900 was approximately one hundred eleven, was twenty six by 1944, fifteen in 1971, twelve in 1978, eight in 2009 and four in 2020.  In the 1960s all sugar factories operating in Jamaica were privately owned, just over one half by foreign investors.  Island wide, the highest level of production was attained in 1965 when approximately 514,800 m.t. of sugar were produced, but that number declined to 366,400 m.t. by 1975.  

The ownership structure of the sugar industry in Jamaica changed, when in 1971 through the National Sugar Co. the Government paid $8.4 million to acquire Frome and Monymusk sugar estates from the West Indies Sugar Co., Ltd (WISCo), the Tate & Lyle subsidiary that had owned them since 1937.  Under the agreement, the two factories and six hundred thousand acres involved in the transaction were leased back to Tate & Lyle for management purposes.  Also in 1971 the Government acquired the Bernard Lodge estate from United Fruit Co. but without the leasing agreement.  Between 1975 and 1978, the Government owned National Sugar Co. acquired eight of the twelve factories in operation. 

In 1982 the Government owned Jamaica Sugar Holdings was created to acquire the eight sugar mills owned by the Government under the National Sugar Co. Management was awarded to the Booker Tate Group, a firm affiliated with British refiner Tate & Lyle.  Under the direction of Booker Tate Group, three sugar mills were closed and the remaining five continued to operate under their management.  In 1994 due to heavy losses accumulated by Jamaica Sugar Holdings, the Government sold three of the factories it operated (Frome, Monymusk and Bernard Lodge ) for J$1.36 billion to The Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ).  SCJ was a consortium of Manufacturers Merchant Bank (17%), J Wray & Nephew Co. Ltd. (17%) and Booker Tate Group (17%) and the Government retaining 49%.  The three private partners did not provide the capital needed to keep the sugar factories in operation and returned their 51% back to the Government in October 1998 for J$1.00.  

Traditionally, Jamaican sugar mills do not operate at or near full capacity, with production capacity of 256,000 m.t., the five sugar mills in operation during the 2017-2018 milling season (Frome, Monymusk, Appleton, Worthy Park & Golden Grove) produced only 82,400 m.t. of sugar or 32% of total capacity.  This Sugar Production.docx table shows the inefficiency of each sugar mill between the years 2000 and 2009 based on their operating capacity vs. production output.  It is therein clearly seen that the Jamaican sugar industry is very inefficient.  Although no data is available, it has also been documented that tons per acre and yields were well below what they should be due to poor harvesting methods.  In addition to their small size and down time for repairs, these conditions prevented sugar mills in Jamaica from operating at a profit.

In 2009 the the Jamaica Sugar Co. owned and operated the following six sugar mills and a distillery,

• Frome and Monymusk are detailed in a separate page. 

• The Bernard Lodge estate which had been in existence since at least 1829 when it was acquired by Thomas James Bernard (1796-1850) from George Wright.  A modern sugar mill when built in 1918, it ceased to operate in July 2013.  As of 2018 a planned community was in the works covering approximately five thousand four hundred acres of the lands once used to grow sugarcane for the closed sugar mill.  Reportedly this project was to start in the summer of 2020.

• The Long Pond Sugar Factory and Hampden Sugar Estate were divested for J$133 million by the Government to Everglades Farms Ltd. headed by the Hussey Group.  Long Pond ceased to operate and was re-acquired by the Government after the 2016 crop year.  After its closure, the Government agreed to sublet three thousand six hundred acres of land previously used to grow sugarcane to ninety farmers who will grow different crops for local consumption and for export.  In July 2017 a fire destroyed the Long Pond Rum Distillery adjacent to the sugar factory.  Hampden Sugar Estate is still in operation producing 46º and 60º overproof rums.

• Golden Grove Sugar Co. was established in 2009 by Seprod to incorporate the assets of the St. Thomas Sugar Co. Ltd. as a result of the privatization of the sugar industry.  Its production was 11,300 & 10,200 m.t. in the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 milling seasons respectively, it ceased to operate after the 2019 crop season citing heavy operational losses.​​

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[1] Matthew Parker: The Sugar Barons, Family Corruption, Empire and War in the West Indies