Today known as Chiquita Brands International, the United Fruit Company was established in New Jersey in 1899 as the result of the merger of two tropical trading companies; Minor Cooper Keith’s Tropical Trading & Transportation Co. and Andrew W. Preston’s Boston Fruit Co.  According to Andrew Perston’s declarations before the US Senate Committee on Relations with Cuba in May 1902, the Boston Fruit Co. had begun investing in Cuba since before the war for Independence acquiring a banana plantation at Nipe Bay in the Holguín Province. United Fruit Co. original idea was to harvest bananas in Cuba for which they acquired some two hundred eighty thousand acres of land.  

When the United Fruit Co. realized in 1900 that the land was not suitable to growing bananas, they conceived the idea of harvesting sugarcane instead.  In order to process the sugarcane harvested, in 1900 the company built Central Boston, its first sugar mill, designed by Hugh Kelly & Co. on about seventy thousand acres of land in Banes near the city of Holguin.  Central Boston commenced operation in May 1901.  Its second sugar mill was Central Preston, named in honor of Andrew W. Preston and built by subsidiary Nipe Bay Co. in 1907 on one hundred seventy two thousand acres of land.   Central Preston's 1921-22 season sugar production was approximately 700,000 bags, exceeded only by Central Delicias.

Towards the end of the 19th Century the Revere Sugar Refining Co. in Boston, established in 1867 in East Cambridge on the banks of the Miller River, was one of the few sugar refineries in the US that had not been absorbed into the American Sugar Refining Co., also known as the Sugar Trust. In the early 1900s, the Revere Sugar Refining Co. was acquired by United Fruit Co. and operated as a subsidiary to refine the sugar it produced in Cuba.  In 1918 new facilities were built on the Mystic River front of Charlestown.

United Fruit planted sugarcane at its own sugarcane fields, processed it at its own sugar mills in Cuba, shipped it to Boston on its own steamers and refined it at its own refinery.  This integration completed the cycle of operations from planting the sugarcane to transporting to processing and marketing the final product.  No other sugar producing enterprise had such comprehensive integration.