The sugar corporation has announced that the required amount of cane to run the US$185 million Skeldon sugar factory at top capacity will not be available until 2012.
Earlier projections from the corporation had indicated that a sufficient supply would be ready by 2011, and only recently there was talk of a bumper crop next year.
But in a press release yesterday, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) said the required supply of canes from both private farmers and the state-owned sugar estate to feed the troubled Chinese-built factory was not expected for another full year.
Observers have pointed to the evident lack of proper planning for this massive project. It has been some three years since the factory has been installed and there is still not enough cane to supply it.
The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) had also lamented the situation at Skeldon saying that the commissioning of the factory and an adequate cane supply ought to have coincided.
Skeldon is currently grinding around 210 tonnes of cane per hour, but has a capacity of 350 tonnes per hour. The poor supply of cane and operational problems at the factory are contributing to its dismal performance.
GuySuCo also pointed to Skeldon production this year, which surpassed last year’s as the crop draws to a close. However, both the old and new factories were in operation last year. Further, the production for this year of 30,522 tonnes of sugar is still well below the budgeted figure. Last year’s production was 25,715 tonnes.
GuySuCo said too that “this achievement” at Skeldon comes at a period when engineers of the Chinese contracting firm CNTIC are working to correct all the technical challenges by mid 2011. The new factory has been plagued with defects and suffered a few shutdowns within the last month; it is currently operating at around 50 per cent of its capacity.
“The factory continued to grind throughout the recent one-week industry-wide strike and apart from the technical problems, production would have been much higher barring work stoppages throughout the year due to strikes and the wet weather,” the corporation said in its statement.
The Skeldon factory was built by the Chinese company, China National Technology Import and Export Corp. Work began on the factory in 2005 and it was expected that the project would have been completed by October 2007. The commissioning date was pushed back several times until August last year.
President Bharrat Jagdeo recently warned that if the new Skeldon sugar factory doesn’t succeed the industry is dead. He lamented that the factory was not delivering the expected results and as a result the sugar industry was in trouble.
A production target of 280,000 tonnes of sugar had been set for this year, but the industry recorded a shortfall during the first crop with output being recorded at 81,864 tonnes. The target was later revised to 264,000 tonnes and finally, 250,000 tonnes. As of yesterday total production for the year was just over 210,000 tonnes of sugar.
Meanwhile, GuySuCo has informed GAWU that wages’ negotiations will resume next Monday. The union called a crippling seven days strike last month after the talks broke down.
