Sugar and Confectionery Product Manufacturing (U.S., NAICS 3113)

A Histometrics rollup primer for public-market and private investors. NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard code for grouping businesses. This four-digit "industry group" bundles the country's sweetener makers with its candy makers — the input and the output of the same aisle — into one level.

1. Overview

NAICS 3113 is where America turns sweeteners into treats. It contains three child industries that are usually studied apart but sit together for a reason: one makes sugar (from beets and cane), and the other two spend it — one on sugar-based candy (gummies, hard candy, gum), one on chocolate. So this single level quietly contains its own supply chain: the raw sweetener tier and the two consumer-candy tiers that buy from it.[3]

For an investor, three facts frame the whole level:

• It is two businesses wearing one code. Sugar manufacturing is a capital-heavy, commodity, policy-protected input industry with almost no public access. Confectionery — chocolate plus nonchocolate — is a brand-driven, defensive consumer industry where the dollars, the jobs, and the plants overwhelmingly sit. Candy is ~74% of the level's receipts and ~96% of its plants; sugar is ~26% of receipts but only ~4% of plants.[1][2]
• The federal sugar program is the connective tissue — and it cuts both ways. The same policy that props up domestic sugar prices (a profit floor for the sugar half) is a structural cost penalty for the candy half, which pays roughly double the world price for its main ingredient.[7][8] Owning the whole level is, in effect, an internal hedge on the price of sugar.
• Public access is thin everywhere. There is no listed U.S. pure-play in sugar at all; the cleanest listed exposure is a few chocolate majors and one small nonchocolate name. Most of the level's value is private, cooperative, or employee-owned.

One structural note before the numbers: the three children are not equally divided beneath. Sugar splits into beet (311313) and cane (311314); chocolate splits into bean-to-bar (311351) and purchased-chocolate (311352); nonchocolate has a single six-digit child (311340) identical to itself.[3] So the level is really five distinct manufacturing populations, and — as Section 4 shows — in every one of them the dollars and the stock tickers sit in different tiers.

The distinctive value of reading 3113 as one level is the contrast across its three children — different sizes, different owners, different directions of travel, and an input-output tension between them. Section 2 leads with that comparison.

2. What's inside — the three child industries and how they differ

The level splits into three five-digit children. The first is upstream (it sells an ingredient); the other two are downstream (they buy it). They differ in almost every way that matters to an investor except one: a shared exposure to sweetener costs and to health/GLP-1 demand pressure.

(HHI = Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a 0–10,000 concentration score where under 1,500 reads as "unconcentrated"; CR4 = combined revenue share of the four largest firms. ESOP = employee stock ownership plan, a trust that holds a company for its workers. PE = private equity. Both concentration measures are explained in Section 3. Shares are Histometrics calculations of the child figures against the 3113 totals in Section 3.)[1][2][4][5][14][24]

Four contrasts worth holding onto:

1. Sugar is small in plants but not in dollars — and it pays the most. Only 46 firms and 83 plants make more than a quarter of the level's revenue, because a sugar factory is a several-hundred-million-dollar piece of capital equipment. Average pay descends as you move downstream: roughly $74,300 per worker in sugar, $62,000 in nonchocolate, $54,000 in chocolate. Candy, by contrast, is thousands of establishments — from multinational lines down to Main Street chocolatiers.[1][2]

2. The three move in different directions. Nonchocolate is the growth child (gummies, sour, novelty formats), now 40.9% of U.S. confectionery retail.[4] Chocolate grows in dollars but has been fighting a record cocoa spike and falling unit volumes.[12][14] Sugar's physical footprint is shrinking as marginal plants close and cooperative payments fall.[10] They do not rise and fall together.

3. The input-output tension is internal to the level. When domestic sugar is expensive, the sugar half earns more and the candy halves earn less; when sugar is cheap, the reverse. A single Farm Bill decision moves all three at once — in opposite directions between the sweetener maker and the candy maker.[7][8]

4. In every child, the money and the listings sit in different places. Cane books ~60% of sugar receipts and beet makes ~56% of the tons — and neither is listed at all. Purchased chocolate holds ~73% of chocolate receipts, while the marquee public names (Hershey, Mondelez) sit in the ~27% bean-to-bar tier. Nonchocolate's plants are fragmented while its brands belong to private multinationals. The pattern repeats at every level of this tree: the deeper the dollars, the thinner the public access.[1][5]

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

Our ground-truth federal statistics for NAICS 3113, with the three children summing into each total (rounding aside):

Average pay across the level works out to about $60,000 per worker — a mid-wage manufacturing base — and the average establishment employs roughly 45 people, so these are real factories and specialty plants, not candy-counter storefronts.[2] Note that the firm count (1,773) is slightly below the sum of the children (1,788) because a handful of companies — mostly candy makers that operate in both the chocolate and nonchocolate codes — are counted once at this four-digit level.[1] Note also that 2022 is now a dated baseline: the one child with a fresher federal reading, nonchocolate, shows $12.7 billion of 2023 sales against its $11.5 billion 2022 Census figure, so treat these shares as a floor rather than a current snapshot.[1]

Concentration for the whole level (2022 Economic Census):[1]

• Top 4 firms: 31.4% of receipts (CR4)
• Top 8 firms: 41.6% (CR8)
• Top 20 firms: 59.5% (CR20)
• Top 50 firms: 78.0% (CR50)
• Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI): 390.4 — well below the ~1,500 "unconcentrated" line.

That 390.4 needs a caveat all three child primers flagged, and the revised children show that the artifact compounds all the way down the tree. Beet's own HHI is ~2,075 and cane's 1,189.5 — both "concentrated" — yet merging them into sugar reads 759.7. Bean-to-bar is 960.7 and the level's chocolate child 902.8, with the chocolate level's top-4 share (51.2%) actually lower than either of its own halves (53.4% and 58%). Merge all three children and 3113 reads 390.4.[1] Each merge adds producer pools whose leaders are different firms, so no single company towers over the combined total — but that is arithmetic, not competition. Read across the branded shelf, a short list of names — Mars, Hershey, Ferrero, Lindt on candy; a handful of co-ops plus U.S. Sugar and ASR on sugar — dominate their respective arenas.[16]

Undercount / scope caveat. These are factory-gate manufacturing figures, and they understate the consumer market in three ways. First, retail is far larger: U.S. all-confectionery retail sales set records at ~$54 billion in 2024 and ~$55 billion in 2025 — bigger than this entire level's factory value, the gap being distributor and retail markup.[4] Within that $55 billion, chocolate is ~$28.4 billion (~52%), nonchocolate $22.5 billion (40.9%), and gum $4.1 billion.[4] Worth noticing: chocolate is about 63% of the two candy children's combined factory shipments but only about half of confectionery retail dollars once gum is counted alongside nonchocolate — consistent with the children's point that the nonchocolate shelf is more heavily import-fed. Second, a large share of both candy and sugar is imported and never enters the Census factory figure (Haribo opened its first U.S. plant only in 2023).[18] Third, on the sugar side the codes exclude farming (beet and cane growing sit in separate codes), so vertically integrated sugar enterprises — which own farmland, mills, power plants, and railroads — are much bigger than their manufacturing slice suggests.[3][5] For scale on the candy side, one private owner, Mars, reported roughly $54.6 billion of total sales in 2024 — global and across all products, but larger by itself than this whole level's U.S. factory shipments.[16] What these figures are not is a small-operator undercount in the aggregate counts: the plant and employment tallies are reliable; the artisan chocolatier tail is the one place small businesses slip below survey thresholds.

4. Investable universe — where value concentrates across the children

Value and public access point in opposite directions, and that is the single most useful thing to know before buying anything in this level.

• Sugar (26% of receipts): closed to public equity. No U.S. sugar producer — beet or cane — is listed, and the larger-revenue half (cane, ~60% of the child's receipts) is the more closed of the two. The owners are grower cooperatives (American Crystal, Amalgamated, Western Sugar), employee-owned U.S. Sugar, and family-and-cooperative ASR Group / Florida Crystals. The nearest listed operator is Sucro Limited (TSXV: SUGR), which owns North American refining assets but mixes refining with commodity trading and logistics. Value here compounds in cooperative payout streams and in Florida farmland, not in a brokerage account.[24]
• Nonchocolate (27% of receipts): one thin public play. Only Tootsie Roll Industries is essentially a pure listed nonchocolate maker — roughly $725 million of FY2025 revenue against a ~$3.3 billion market capitalization, and family-controlled.[22] Everything else — Mars, Ferrero/Ferrara (~20% U.S. non-choc retail share), Perfetti Van Melle, Haribo, Just Born, Spangler — is private, and Mars's completion of the Kellanova acquisition in December 2025 removed one more adjacent listed route.[18]
• Chocolate (47% of receipts): the deepest public exposure, and it clusters upstream. The listed names — Hershey, Mondelez, Lindt, the "picks-and-shovels" grinder Barry Callebaut, and Fuji Oil (owner of Blommer) — sit mostly in the integrated bean-to-bar tier, which is only ~27% of the child's receipts. The larger purchased-chocolate tier (~73%, gift and seasonal) is mostly private: ~900 chocolatiers, plus See's inside Berkshire Hathaway. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is the only near-pure U.S. listing in that gift tier, and it is a micro-cap currently operating at a loss ($27.5 million of FY2026 revenue, a $3.6 million operating loss).[1][23]

Bottom line: the more mundane and upstream the child, the less you can own it publicly — and inside each child, the tier holding the most dollars is the one with the least listed access. Sugar (the commodity input) is effectively private; chocolate (the branded output) offers the most listed choice; nonchocolate sits in between with a single small pure-play. Tickers and scale are reserved for Section 10.

5. How the money works

All three children earn on a spread — what they sell for, minus what they pay for their key input and energy — but the input and the lever differ.

• Sugar: a policy-set processing margin. Sugar plants run a compressed seasonal "campaign" (crops don't store well), so throughput and energy (natural gas to boil off water) drive unit cost, and profit rests on a domestic price the federal program holds above the world price. In the grower-cooperative model that dominates the sugar half, "profit" flows back to member-farmers as per-ton beet or cane payments, so the co-op runs near break-even and the upside lands with owners, not on an exchange. The current squeeze is visible in exactly that line: American Crystal's 2024 crop returned a $78.00-per-ton net beet payment, while its record-volume 2025 crop was forecast to return only $43.85 — a 44% decline.[5][10]
• Nonchocolate: commodity-input, brand-output. Sugar and corn syrup are the biggest ingredients, and U.S. makers pay the sugar-program premium as a structural cost. The moat is brand plus checkout placement — candy is an impulse buy, and private label is a weaker threat than in most grocery aisles, which protects branded margins. The offset is buyer power: Tootsie Roll disclosed that McLane, Walmart, and Dollar Tree together were about 36% of its 2025 product sales.[4][22]
• Chocolate: the cocoa spread is the whole story. Margins move with one imported, weather-exposed commodity the U.S. can't grow. Cocoa rose roughly 310% between 2023 and late 2024, peaking somewhere between ~$10,400 and near $13,000 per tonne depending on contract and timing — and Hershey's full-year 2025 gross margin fell to 33.5% from 47.3%, with operating margin down to 12.3% from 25.9%.[12][13][14] Bean processors can hedge cocoa directly in futures; the larger purchased-chocolate tier absorbs higher coating prices with a lag and little protection. The merchant grinders show the pass-through mechanically: Barry Callebaut's FY2024/25 volume fell 6.8% while revenue rose 49% in local currency to CHF 14.8 billion and recurring net profit fell 36%.[15]

The shared lever across both candy children is price-versus-volume. With input costs rising, makers defended margin by raising prices and shrinking packs, so 2024–25 dollar sales rose while unit volumes fell — seasonal chocolate units alone dropped about 13.7%. Growth was priced, not eaten. The durable question in either half is how much price a brand can push before shoppers trade down.[4][12] And the shared cost line is sugar: the same program that supports the sugar half is a headwind for both candy halves' margins.

6. Demand drivers

• Affordable indulgence and gifting (candy). Confectionery is a cheap "permissible indulgence" that holds up in downturns, sells on impulse, and concentrates around the "big four" seasons — Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, and winter — which made up 63% of confectionery sales in 2025, winter alone about $7.5 billion. Household penetration is essentially universal at 99.8%.[4]
• Innovation and premiumization. Gummy, sour, and novelty formats are the growth engine on the nonchocolate side; dark, single-origin, and craft products lift the chocolate side.[4]
• Substitution between the children. This level's demand can rotate internally: as cocoa costs spiked, nonchocolate retail gained nearly $5 billion (about 70%) between 2019 and 2024 while chocolate stayed roughly flat, and industrial buyers gained access to compound coatings and cocoa-free alternatives. A dollar leaving chocolate often lands one code over rather than leaving 3113.[4]
• Reformulation toward "real sugar." A push away from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS, a corn-based liquid sweetener) — dramatized by Coca-Cola's 2025 U.S. cane-sugar Coke under the "Make America Healthy Again" movement — is a modest tailwind for the sugar half and for cane in particular. HFCS availability has fallen nearly 45% since 1999 while refined cane-and-beet sugar availability recovered to 68.4 pounds per person in 2023.[6][11]
• Flat-to-declining sweetener volume (headwind for sugar). U.S. per-capita caloric-sweetener availability fell from 153.6 pounds in 1999 to 123.5 pounds in 2023; population growth roughly offsets it, keeping total sugar volume unusually stable rather than growing. USDA's May 2026 analysis projected total food-and-beverage sugar use down 0.7% year over year.[5][6]
• The GLP-1 counter-current (shared headwind). Appetite-suppressing weight-loss drugs (GLP-1 = glucagon-like peptide-1, the hormone pathway they act on) are nudging demand toward smaller and better-for-you formats across all three children. The children measure adoption differently and neither figure should be treated as settled: the nonchocolate primer cites an estimated 8–10% of U.S. adults, while Hershey's own disclosure describes usage in roughly one in six U.S. households.[12][25] So far a brake rather than a reversal.

7. Regulation

Regulation is heavier here than in most consumer categories, and one policy links all three children.

• The U.S. Sugar Program (USDA). Price-support loans set a de-facto floor under domestic sugar — for FY2026, a national average raw-cane rate of 24.00¢/lb and refined-beet rate of 32.77¢/lb; marketing allotments cap how much each processor may sell and formally divide the market 54.35% beet / 45.65% cane; and tariff-rate quotas (TRQs — a low-tariff import volume with steep tariffs above it) hold down imports. The result: U.S. buyers pay roughly double the world sugar price. The children carry different cost estimates and we keep both: GAO puts annual consumer costs at $2.5–$3.5 billion with producer benefits of $1.4–$2.7 billion and about $1 billion of net annual economic cost, while the advocacy-side AEI estimate is $2.4–$4 billion a year.[7][8][9] This is simultaneously the sugar half's business model and the candy halves' single most important cost regulation. (USDA = U.S. Department of Agriculture.)
• Food labeling and additives (FDA). Standard Nutrition Facts rules, the added-sugars line, and allergen disclosure apply across candy. The FDA revoked authorization for Red Dye No. 3 in January 2025 with reformulation required by January 15, 2027, and California's Food Safety Act (AB 418) separately bans it from January 1, 2027; a broader push against synthetic dyes is driving early reformulation cost. Enhanced FSMA lot-level traceability records are coming, with enforcement deferred to July 20, 2028. FDA standards of identity (21 CFR Part 163) also legally define what may be sold as "chocolate."[20] (FDA = U.S. Food and Drug Administration.)
• Trade and tariffs. All three children are import-exposed. Sugar imports run under TRQs and U.S.–Mexico antidumping suspension agreements (continued again in September 2025); cocoa can't be grown domestically, so 2025's reciprocal tariffs — a 10% baseline plus country-specific rates on cocoa origins, which Hershey estimated at $100–180 million a year — flowed straight to chocolate costs before being removed in November 2025.[19] The USMCA (U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement) joint review due in 2026 could reshape sugar import competition.[19]
• Environmental and sourcing. Florida cane draws Everglades and field-burning scrutiny; roughly 98% of U.S. sugar beets are genetically modified; heavy metals (lead, cadmium) in dark chocolate face Proposition 65 litigation; and the EU Deforestation Regulation reaches any chocolate maker sourcing alongside Europe. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana supply 60% of global cocoa and that more than 1.5 million children work on cocoa farms there.[6][21]

8. Consolidation

All three children are consolidating, by different mechanisms.

• Sugar — fewer, larger plants. U.S. Sugar bought Imperial Sugar in 2022 for ~$315 million over an antitrust challenge the government lost on appeal in 2023; Texas's last mill closed in 2024, roughly 14% of beet factories closed over a decade, and 2025 ended California beet farming with the Brawley closure.[10] Barriers to entry are formidable: hundreds of millions in hard-to-repurpose equipment, an allotment system that rewards incumbents, and crops that grow in only a few states.
• Nonchocolate — brand roll-up. Ferrero's Ferrara assembled Nestlé's U.S. candy, then Jelly Belly; Perfetti Van Melle bought Mondelez's developed-market gum for $1.35B in 2023; Mars completed its Kellanova acquisition in December 2025; Haribo reshored with its first U.S. plant. Manufacturing stays fragmented while brands concentrate.[18]
• Chocolate — a checked oligopoly. Mars and Hershey lead, then Ferrero and Lindt. The unusual Hershey Trust, controlling roughly 79% of Hershey's combined voting power at year-end 2025, has blocked every takeover run (Mondelez's ~$23 billion approach in 2016, a ~$44 billion combination including debt rejected in 2024), capping the largest logical U.S. deal and pushing M&A into bolt-ons — Lindt/Russell Stover in 2014, Ferrero's $2.8 billion purchase of Nestlé's U.S. candy business in 2018.[16][17]

The common thread: incumbency is durable, and the exit for the long tail is acquisition — by a strategic owner or by private equity. Note also that the two candy children are consolidating into the same private houses: Mars and Ferrero own assets in both codes, which is precisely why the level's firm count sits below the sum of its children.[1]

9. Risks

• Sugar-policy risk (level-wide, but double-edged). A Farm Bill change to loan rates, allotments, or quotas would compress the sugar half's margins and change the candy halves' input costs — helping one side, hurting the other. Sweetener users lobby against the program every cycle.[7][8]
• Cocoa shock (chocolate). A single imported, geographically concentrated commodity (60%+ from Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana) drove the 2024 record; U.S. bean imports fell 22% in 2023 and another 26% in 2024, to 198,000 tonnes, as prices spiked. The un-hedged purchased-chocolate tier carries this with the least protection.[13][21]
• Demand erosion (level-wide). Soft long-run sweetener consumption, GLP-1 adoption, added-sugar scrutiny, and possible sugar taxes weigh on all three.[6][12][25]
• Volume elasticity (candy). Further price hikes risk trade-down and volume declines, as 2024–25 showed.[4][12]
• Retail-buyer concentration and seasonality (candy). A handful of mass, club, and dollar retailers hold pricing leverage — Tootsie Roll's top three customers alone are ~36% of sales — and heavy dependence on four holidays makes calendar and execution errors costly.[4][22]
• Trade whiplash. Tariff and quota changes on sugar, cocoa, and imported candy can move costs abruptly; cocoa tariff policy reversed twice inside 2025, and the 2026 USMCA review is a live sugar swing factor.[19]
• Plant-level operating and food-safety risk. These are industrial plants with real hazards: fine sugar dust is explosive (the 2008 Imperial refinery disaster killed 14 and injured 38), and the candy halves face recall, heavy-metals litigation, and the 2028 traceability build-out.[20][26]
• Investor-specific access risk. The sugar half is closed to public equity; the one nonchocolate pure-play (Tootsie Roll) is illiquid and family-controlled; the only near-pure gift-chocolate listing (RMCF) is currently loss-making; and the deepest chocolate exposure carries the cocoa cycle and, at Hershey, a Trust that limits takeover optionality.[16][22][23]

10. How to invest and outlook

Public routes (thin, and clustered in chocolate).

• Chocolate majors: Hershey (NYSE: HSY) is the clearest U.S.-centric play; Mondelez (Nasdaq: MDLZ) offers global chocolate inside a broader snack portfolio; Lindt & Sprüngli (SIX: LISN) is the premium North-American #3 and the best proxy for the private gift-chocolate tier.
• Picks-and-shovels: Barry Callebaut (SIX: BARN) gives spread-and-volume exposure to chocolate regardless of which brand wins; Fuji Oil (TYO: 2607) adds U.S. processor exposure through Blommer inside a diversified oils-and-fats business.[15]
• Small/speculative: Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (Nasdaq: RMCF) is the only near-pure U.S. gift-chocolate listing and is currently operating at a loss; Tootsie Roll (NYSE: TR) is the only near-pure nonchocolate listing — both small and thinly traded.[22][23]
• Sugar (indirect only): no U.S. sugar producer is listed. Sucro Limited (TSXV: SUGR) is the nearest listed operator but blends refining with trading; foreign proxies — Südzucker (XETRA: SZU, the closest listed beet processor), Cosan (NYSE: CSAN), Rogers Sugar (TSX: RSI) — track world sugar, not the protected U.S. price. Corn-syrup names (ADM, Ingredion) are partly competitors to sugar. On futures, ICE Sugar No. 16 is the U.S. protected-market contract; note that the Teucrium Sugar ETF (NYSE Arca: CANE) holds No. 11 world sugar, not No. 16, so it does not track U.S. domestic economics.[24] There is no pure U.S. confectionery ETF (exchange-traded fund, a listed index-like basket); broad consumer-staples funds are the practical index route.

Private routes (where most of the level's value lives).

• Sugar: cooperative "beet stock" (practically limited to qualifying growers) and farmland/agricultural PE holding cane or beet acreage.[5]
• Candy: direct or PE ownership of a regional maker; suppliers and co-manufacturers (ingredients, packaging, contract production); franchising (RMCF-style); Mars and Ferrero bonds; and underwriting the M&A that is the sector's main liquidity event. Many of the ~900 chocolatiers and the nonchocolate long tail qualify for SBA small-business acquisition financing.[17][23]

Outlook (forward-looking). The three children point in different directions into 2026. Nonchocolate remains the growth child, led by gummy, sour, and novelty formats and now 40.9% of confectionery retail, tempered by dye-reformulation cost and the GLP-1 question.[4][20][25] Chocolate should see margins repair as cocoa normalizes from its 2024 record — StoneX projects global surpluses of roughly 287,000 tonnes in 2025/26 and 267,000 in 2026/27, and Q1 2026 prices ran about a third below Q1 2025, though analysts still see a structurally higher floor near $6,000/tonne — a relief especially for the un-hedged gift tier, against still-soft volumes (grindings fell ~6.7% in 2025).[14] Sugar faces a cautious near term: record supply and soft demand pushed U.S. prices to multi-year lows just as growing costs hit records, squeezing cooperative payouts and closing marginal plants; USDA forecasts FY2026/27 beet-sugar production of 4.821 million STRV — the lowest since FY2019/20, with planted acreage at a 45-year low — and cane production of 4.18 million tons. Its swing factors are political — the next Farm Bill and the 2026 USMCA review — not agronomic.[5][10][19] For the level as a whole, the retail category is projected toward roughly $62 billion by 2030.[4]

The synthesis across all three: NAICS 3113 is a defensive, brand-driven consumer industry (candy) stacked on a protected, commodity input industry (sugar), joined by a federal sugar policy that helps one half and taxes the other. The candy majority holds up across cycles and offers most of the (still-limited) public access; the sugar minority is nearly all private and moves to Washington's clock rather than the market's. For an investor, the level's most useful features are its two internal mechanics: the same sugar price that is a revenue floor for one child is a cost ceiling for the other two, and when cocoa spikes, spending tends to rotate from the chocolate child to the nonchocolate one rather than leave the level at all.

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Sources

Drawn from the three child primers (NAICS 31131, 31134, 31135) and their underlying sources. Federal figures for this level are our ingested Census data for NAICS 3113 (stats-3113.md); the children sum into every 3113 total, rounding aside.

1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration by Largest Firms and Selected Statistics, NAICS 3113, its children, and their national industries (level receipts $42.13B; 1,773 firms; CR4 31.4%, CR8 41.6%, CR20 59.5%, CR50 78.0%; HHI 390.4; child and grandchild receipts, firm counts, CR/HHI figures) and Annual Integrated Economic Survey 2023 (NAICS 311340 sales $12.7B). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html; https://data.census.gov/table/AIESBASICTIMESERIES.AIES31BASIC01
2. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 — NAICS 3113 and children (level: 1,913 establishments; 85,786 employees; $5.18B annual payroll; $1.26B Q1 payroll; child breakouts and implied average pay). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Definitions — 3113 Sugar and Confectionery Product Manufacturing; 31131, 31134, 31135 and their six-digit national industries. https://www.census.gov/naics/
4. National Confectioners Association, State of Treating 2026 / Confectionery Sales Climb to $55 Billion in 2025 (chocolate $28.4B ~52%; nonchocolate $22.5B / 40.9%; gum $4.1B; four seasons 63%; winter ~$7.5B; 99.8% household penetration; ~$62B by 2030); State of Treating 2025 / Confectionery Sales Surpass $54 Billion in 2024 (nonchocolate +~70%, ~$5B, 2019–24); NACS, Candy Dollar Sales Up, Unit Sales Decline in 2024. https://candyusa.com/stateoftreating; https://candyusa.com/news/confectionery-sales-climb-to-55-billion-in-2025/; https://candyusa.com/state-of-treating-2025/; https://www.convenience.org/stay-current/news/2025/march/5/1-nca-candy-sales-up-unit-sales-decline_research
5. USDA Economic Research Service, Sugar and Sweeteners Outlook (Sept/Dec 2025; May 2026; July 2026) — beet ~56% / cane ~44% of U.S. tons; FY2026/27 beet 4.821M STRV and cane 4.18M tons; 45-year-low beet acreage; Louisiana overtaking Florida; food-and-beverage sugar use −0.7% y/y. https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/outlooks/113592/SSS-M-448.pdf; https://ers.usda.gov/media/20880/sss-m-453.pdf; https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/29364/sss-m-455.pdf
6. USDA Economic Research Service, Caloric sweetener availability (153.6 lbs in 1999 to 123.5 lbs in 2023; refined sugar 68.4 lbs; HFCS down ~45%) and Adoption of Genetically Engineered Crops (~98% herbicide-tolerant sugar beet). https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/110515; https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/83714
7. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Sugar Program: Alternative Methods Could Produce More Accurate Assessments of Economic Effects (GAO-24-106144, 2024) — consumer costs $2.5–$3.5B/yr, producer benefits $1.4–$2.7B, ~$1B net economic cost, U.S. price about twice the world price; Congressional Research Service, Fundamental Elements of the U.S. Sugar Program — loan/allotment/TRQ mechanics, 54.35% beet / 45.65% cane split, sweetener-user politics. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106144; https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/IF10223.html
8. USDA Economic Research Service, Sugar and Sweeteners — Policy (domestic prices held above world prices by allotments and TRQs). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/sugar-and-sweeteners/policy
9. American Enterprise Institute, Recapping the Effects of the U.S. Sugar Program (cost $2.4–$4B/yr), 2022. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Recapping-the-Effects-of-the-US-Sugar-Program.pdf
10. American Crystal Sugar Company, Shareholders Harvest a Record-Breaking Crop, Face Market Challenges (Dec 2025) — $78.00/ton 2024 payment, $43.85/ton 2025 forecast; Civil Eats, After 150 Years, California's Sugar Beet Industry Comes to an End (Dec 2025) — Brawley closure, ~14% of beet factories closed in a decade; Texas Monthly, Texas's Last Sugar Mill Just Closed (2024); WUSF, Appeals court rejects antitrust arguments, U.S. Sugar–Imperial (~$315M, 2022–2023). https://www.crystalsugar.com/about-our-cooperative/news-media/news/american-crystal-sugar-company-shareholders-harvest-a-record-breaking-crop-face-market-challenges/; https://civileats.com/2025/12/08/after-150-years-californias-sugar-beet-industry-comes-to-an-end/; https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sugar-mill-texas-drought/; https://www.wusf.org/courts-law/2023-07-14/appeals-court-rejects-antitrust-arguments-us-sugar
11. NPR / PBS NewsHour, Coca-Cola will use U.S. cane sugar in a new Coke; MAHA/anti-HFCS context, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/nx-s1-5476161/coca-cola-cane-sugar-coke-trump-recipe
12. The Hershey Company, 2025 Form 10-K — gross margin 33.5% vs 47.3% in 2024; operating margin 12.3% vs 25.9%; seasonal chocolate units −13.7%; GLP-1 use in ~1 in 6 U.S. households. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/47111/000162828026008586/hsy-20251231.htm
13. USDA Economic Research Service, Charts of Note: Cocoa — West Africa 61% of world production; ~310% price increase 2023–2024; U.S. bean imports −22% in 2023 and −26% in 2024 to 198,000 MT. https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/110921
14. ConfectioneryNews, Record cocoa prices reshape chocolate production (2025–2026, peak range); StoneX, Cocoa market faces life after crisis (surpluses ~287,000 t in 2025/26, ~267,000 t in 2026/27); J.P. Morgan Global Research / Expert Market Research, Cocoa prices (grindings −6.7% in 2025; Q1 2026 down ~33% y/y; structural floor ~$6,000/t). https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2025/05/09/record-cocoa-prices-in-2025-reshape-chocolate-production-and-global-markets/; https://www.stonex.com/en/insights/cocoa-market-faces-life-after-crisis/; https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/global-research/commodities/cocoa-prices
15. Barry Callebaut, Full-year results fiscal year 2024/25 (volume −6.8% to 2.125M tonnes; revenue CHF 14.8B, +49% in local currency; recurring net profit −36%); Fuji Oil Holdings, Blommer acquisition and restructuring. https://www.barry-callebaut.com/en/about-us/media/news-stories/barry-callebaut-group-full-year-results-fiscal-year-2024-25; https://www.fujioil.co.jp/en/pdf/ir/library/hosoku/240322_presentation_en.pdf
16. CNBC, Hershey Trust controls ~79% of vote; rejects Mondelez takeover approach (2016 and 2024); Transport Topics / Worldly Partners, Mondelez–Hershey ~$44B including debt; Mars total sales ~$54.6B (2024). https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/09/hershey-stock-mondelez-takeover-offer.html; https://www.ttnews.com/articles/mondelez-hershey-takeover; https://worldlypartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Mars-Inc.pdf
17. Lindt & Sprüngli, Acquisition of Russell Stover (2014); Lindt North America is the #3 chocolate manufacturer on the continent; Food Dive, Ferrero completes $2.8B acquisition of Nestlé's U.S. candy business (2018). https://www.report.lindt-spruengli.com/14/ar/en/annual_report/acquisition_of_russell_stover.htm; https://www.fooddive.com/news/nutella-owner-buys-nestles-us-candy-business-for-28b/514907/
18. Food Dive, Mondelez sells developed-market gum business to Perfetti Van Melle for $1.35B; Mars, Inc., Kellanova acquisition completion, SEC, December 2025; Ferrara Candy Company, FY2023 performance (~20% U.S. non-chocolate retail share); PR Newswire, HARIBO opens first U.S. factory (Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin), 2023. https://www.fooddive.com/news/mondelez-sells-gum-business-trident-dentyne/639087/; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/55067/000119312525315130/d90636dex991.htm; https://www.ferrara.com/us/en/ferrarar-candy-company-announces-fy-2023-performance; https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/haribo-opens-first-factory-in-us-introduces-new-gummi-innovation-for-summer-wild-berry-goldbears-301887187.html
19. Reason, 2025 reciprocal tariffs on cocoa-origin countries; Hershey $100–180M cost estimate; FoodBev Media, Trump administration removes tariffs on cocoa, coffee and other foods (Nov 2025); Federal Register, Sugar From Mexico: Continuation of Suspension of the Antidumping Duty Investigation (Sept 19, 2025) and USMCA 2026 review context. https://reason.com/2025/08/01/trumps-war-on-chocolate-theres-no-way-for-us-to-source-this-domestically/; https://www.foodbev.com/news/trump-removes-tariffs-on-range-of-f-b-products-including-cocoa-coffee-and-beef; https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/19/2025-18222/sugar-from-mexico-continuation-of-suspension-of-the-antidumping-duty-investigation
20. U.S. Food and Drug Administration / CNN, FDA revokes authorization for Red No. 3; reformulation required by January 15, 2027 (Jan 2025); California Legislature, Assembly Bill 418 (California Food Safety Act), effective Jan 1, 2027; FDA, FSMA Final Rule on Additional Traceability Records (enforcement deferred to July 20, 2028); eCFR, 21 CFR Part 163 — Cacao Products. https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-revoke-authorization-use-red-no-3-food-and-ingested-drugs; https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB418; https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-requirements-additional-traceability-records-certain-foods; https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-163
21. U.S. Department of Labor, List of Goods Produced by Child Labor — Cocoa Supply Chains (Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana 60% of global cocoa; 1.5M+ children on cocoa farms); osapiens, EU Deforestation Regulation and cocoa. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods/supply-chains/cocoa; https://osapiens.com/blog/bittersweet-the-influence-of-the-eudr-on-cocoa-production/
22. Tootsie Roll Industries, 2025 Form 10-K (net product sales ~$724.7M; McLane, Walmart and Dollar Tree ~36% of product sales); StockAnalysis, Tootsie Roll market capitalization (~$3.3B). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/98677/000110465926021621/tr-20251231x10k.htm; https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/tr/market-cap/
23. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, Fiscal Year 2026 Form 10-K (revenue $27.5M; operating loss $3.6M; 71% of revenue from manufacturing); U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1616262/000119312526248296/rmcf-20260228.htm; https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
24. Sucro Limited, Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2025 Results (nearest listed refiner with North American assets); ICE, Sugar No. 16 Contract Specifications (U.S. domestic raw-cane futures); Teucrium Sugar Fund, SEC Form 10-K (holds No. 11 world sugar futures, not No. 16). https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/sucro-announces-fourth-quarter-and-year-end-2025-results-898881470.html; https://www.ice.com/products/914/specs; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1471824/000143774926006385/weat20251231_10k.htm
25. Cornell Chronicle, Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy; ConfectioneryNews, GLP-1 drugs reshape confectionery demand — but sales keep growing, 2025–2026 (estimated 8–10% of U.S. adults). https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/12/ozempic-changing-foods-americans-buy; https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2026/06/24/glp-1-drugs-reshape-confectionery-demand-but-sales-keep-growing/
26. U.S. Chemical Safety Board, Imperial Sugar Company Dust Explosion and Fire (2008) — 14 killed, 38 injured. https://www.csb.gov/imperial-sugar-company-dust-explosion-and-fire/