Sugar King

The world's biggest sugar daddy is a stocky, Venezuela-born Cuban who in light moments proclaims that "sugar is my mistress," and in serious moments insists that "the degree of a people's civilization is related to their sugar consumption--less civilized people use less sugar." The man: Julio Lobo (meaning wolf), 59, who bears the scars of his lifelong love affair with sugar. Entrepreneur Lobo carries a .38 caliber slug imbedded in his skull, put there by a Cuban gangster ostensibly bent on robbery. He has had three heart attacks. Yet he works a 14-hour day, and spends so much time inspecting his far-flung properties that he has a Cadillac specially equipped for sleeping. For his trouble, the king of the world's sugar merchants has also collected a fortune variously estimated at between $70 million and $100 million.

Last week, as the Middle East crisis pushed sugar futures prices upward, Sugarman Lobo stood to profit even more. He owns or controls eleven sugar mills in Cuba, finances another 15 to 20 mills when the market demands it. He handles half the 5.5 million-ton Cuban sugar crop, finances 25% of the Puerto Rican and Philippine crops, amounting to another 500,000 tons. A rise of a fraction of a cent ( 1/2 last week) on world markets can mean a small fortune for Lobo.

Lobo has already made profits enough this year to satisfy most men. A severe drought in Puerto Rico and a 126-day strike that paralyzed Hawaii's sugar industry prevented both from meeting sugar quotas to the U.S. To make up the shortage, Cuba's sugar quota was boosted three times in five weeks, all of which was money in the bank for Lobo. In no time, he dispatched a Lobo-chartered ship, the largest ever to carry sugar out of Cuba, to the U.S. West Coast with 19,000 tons.

Complaints on Sunday. Millionaire Lobo has always had his hand in a sugar bowl. He grew up in Cuba (after his banker father was forced out of Venezuela by a revolution), came to the U.S. for a. degree in sugar engineering at Louisiana State University, then went into the family sugar-trading firm of Galban Lobo. Soon Lobo was on his own, eventually started buying mills as the best protection for a speculator. Five months ago he bought his latest and most impressive parcel: a $24.5 million complex of Cuban mills and other assets called the Hershey properties, once held by the chocolate-makers and since 1946 by Cuban Atlantic Sugar Co.

Lobo watches over his holdings like a benign feudal baron, keeps on the good side of his workers. He provides them with houses, schools and churches, goes into the fields to talk with them, personally accepts petitions and complaints on the porches of his many homes, which adjoin his mills. He can also get tough. Lone Wolf Lobo has long conducted a single-handed battle against government controls and quotas. With the backing of most rival sugarmen, the Cuban government keeps tight control on the industry to curb overproduction and bolster prices. It also cooperates with the sugar workers' unions in crippling growers with restrictions that tie the industry to old-fashioned methods. Cuban millers, for example, cannot build a factory without destroying the old one first. Result: Cuba has not had a new sugar mill since the '20s.

Modernize or Die. Plowing back a big slice of his profits into better mills, Lobo wants to modernize the industry, step up production, sell sugar on the open market without quotas or controls. Other sugar-men fear that heavier production would force prices down. But Lobo argues that the industry should find new uses for sugar, thus attract new industry into Cuba's one-commodity economy. Thanks largely to his campaign, several plants are now being built in Cuba to produce such sugar byproducts as wallboard, newsprint and plastics.

He also has high hopes of increasing worldwide sugar consumption. The U.S. and most of Europe consume an average 100 Ibs. of sugar per capita yearly, while underdeveloped countries such as India consume as little as 13 Ibs. Lobo sees the world as a huge sugar bowl waiting to be filled, but he knows that without change Cuba's sugar industry cannot help fill it properly. Cuba's share of production has slipped from 22% of the market in 1925 to only 14% today, is bound to keep slipping as Cuba loses its markets to more modern producers. Says Lobo: "Cuba must modernize or die."

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