The first sugar factory in Guadeloupe is believed to be Saint-Salary, a sugar plantation in Le Moule where cane juice was extracted and muscovado sugar produced. The first information available of a sugar factory on the present day site of the Gardel Sugar Factory date back to 1768. In 1870 records show a sugar factory by the name of Lagardelle. The name Gardel however, did not appear as such until the end of the 19th Century when the sugar industry evolved towards more mechanized structures, capable of handling larger volumes. In its first campaign, Gardel Sugar Factory produced a modest five hundred fifty tons of muscovado sugar. But thanks to constant improvements, thirteen years later it managed to increase production to thirteen hundred tons, making it the twelfth largest of the island’s twenty two sugar factories.

In the 1920s a new phase of industrialization began under the impetus of Eugène Graeve who also owned Courcelles and Gentilly sugar factories and decided to consolidate the sugar business into a single site, transforming Gardel into Société Anonyme Sucrerie Gardel. In 1928 Armand Aubéry takes over the helm of Société Anonyme Sucrerie Gardel, consolidates its lands and modernized the plant’s machinery gradually integrating electric turbines and more efficient mills, thus improving grinding capacity. In 1967 there were ten sugar factories on the island, but beginning in the 1970s, the sugar industry in general and Guadeloupe sugar industry in particular faced difficult times leading to the closure of several of them. By 1981 only three sugar factories remained operating on the island: Gardel, Beauport and Grosse Montagne.

On September 17, 1989, the effects of Hurricane Hugo caused substantial damage to the sugar industry of Guadeloupe, Gardel suffered heavy damage, but Beauport Sugar Factory never recovered and closed for good in July 1990. In 1991 cane production dropped to 630,000 tons and in 1994 fell further to 458,000 tons, insufficient to maintain both Gardel and Grosse Montagne sugar factories. Faced with this situation, and ensure the future of the industry, Grosse Montagne Sugar Factory ceased operations in 1995 leaving Gardel as the last and only sugar factory in Guadeloupe still in operation today.