Panela (Whole Cane Sugar)
Santana Cooperative
About Santana Cooperative
Santana is a town and municipality in Ricaurte Province, northern Boyacá, Colombia, sitting at around 1,550 metres in the Eastern Ranges of the Andes. Close to the Suárez River, agriculture is central to local life, and sugarcane is grown specifically for panela.
Our panela comes from five traditional trapiches (mills) and supports around 30 families. That scale matters: it keeps production close to the farms and makes the supply chain legible rather than anonymous.
Panela (also called non‑centrifugal cane sugar or whole cane sugar) is made by
extracting sugarcane juice, concentrating it through heat, then drying it down—without refining or removing the natural molasses. The result is a medium‑brown sugar with caramel notes, a sweet aroma, and a soft, slightly fluffy texture that dissolves quickly.
Why Santana Cooperative
We chose panela as a practical alternative to refined sugar because it keeps more of the cane’s character in the cup, and because refined sugar is typically blended at industrial scale, where origin is often reduced to a country or broad region. Even many certified sugars cannot always be traced back to a small number of producing communities.
Using Santana panela means we can be specific about where our sweetness comes from: the town, the trapiches, and the families behind them, while delivering a rounder, more flavourful sweetness in drinks and baking.