Kotobuki Sugar Factory

Eastern Taiwan’s first modern sugar refinery, opened in 1913 by the Taitō Takushoku Seitō (台東拓殖製糖) company on a site already in use for black sugar production since 1904, and absorbed in 1914 into the much larger Ensuikō Seitō (鹽水港製糖株式會社) operation. An alcohol distillery was added in 1919. Heavily damaged by Allied bombing in 1944, the refinery was judged too far gone to rebuild after the war, and its remaining machinery was transferred south to what is now Hualien Sugar Factory. In 1955 the grounds were transferred to the Veterans Affairs Council (VAC) to establish Datong Cooperative Farm (大同合作農場), now known simply as Hualien Farm (花蓮農場). The original Hualien Farm Guesthouse remains intact and protected but most other traces have been demolished apart from the odd outbuilding scattered across the former grounds of the sugar factory.