Dear Editor,
GuySuCo, in its recent press statement, has confirmed that it fell short of its 1st crop 2015 target of 86,201 tonnes sugar by 5,000 tonnes, despite its CEO stating in the media a few weeks before the elections that the sugar company will “comfortably surpass” its target. The continuous poor performance of Skeldon Estate, which was reported in a section of the media last Friday as producing just half of its 17,200 tonnes target set for the just concluded 1st crop, is now being blamed, according to the company’s release on May 24, to the almost 4 week late start “as a result of the late arrival of critical materials required for the completion of the modification works on its punt dumper.” Given the criticality of the performance of this factory to the overall performance of the company, couldn’t there have been better planning by the technical factory operations and procurement personnel to avoid a 4-week late start? The same goes for Enmore factory which began its crop 2 weeks later than scheduled due to the “late arrival of materials for factory maintenance”. It’s obvious that the company is either beset by poor planning at the corporate level on the procurement of “critical materials” or there is poor factory maintenance planning systems, or both.
Editor, the management of GuySuCo has to be quite aware that the 1st crop, like the 2nd crop, must be scheduled for start and stop to avoid the May/June and December/January rains, respectively; as such it’s an unforgivable act to allow procurement delays to delay the start of a US$200M factory by 4 weeks, and allow 95,000 to be carried forward to the 2nd crop. 45,000 tonnes of canes at Enmore will also be carried forward, as stated in the company’s release.
The late start at these 2 estates, as stated by the company, caused the 1st crop to run into the May/June rains; thus bringing the crop to a premature end. The 140,000 tonnes of canes that have to be carried forward on these 2 estates to the 2nd crop will be older by approximately 9 weeks, and for sure sugar recovery will be half of what it would have been had the canes been harvested at the right time. The perpetually poor performance at Skeldon since it’s commissioning in 2009, has the company stating over and over the huge amount of canes being carried forward. No one knows for sure whether the amount of carry-forward canes is accurate.
The true state of cultivation has never been tested on whether at the designed throughput the cultivation is capable of supplying the required amount of canes, because since its commissioning the factory has never sustained even half the intended throughput.
The other observation in the company’s release is the claim that “cane yields across the industry delivering 3.1 tonnes of canes per hectare over budget and a one percent higher increase over budget of sugar in the cane”, is that there hasn’t been any disclosure about what the budgeted tonne cane per hectare is, so how can one measure performance in field productivity? The same goes for sugar in the cane. For the company to say that it is “pleased” with its performance without relating it to acceptable productivity benchmarks is akin to a class teacher lowering the pass mark for her class to 40%, then going to the headmaster at the end of the term and informing him that she is pleased that 100% of her class passed. What is the company’s benchmark on cane yield and “sugar in the cane” so that the public could relate these to its performance?
Apart from stating production and productivity statistics in its release, the public needs to know the cost at which the company is producing sugar, because unless production cost is in line with selling costs, the company shall forever be a burden on the taxpayers of this country.
Yours faithfully,
Wazir Khan
