Two Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) estates are celebrating after surpassing their weekly sugar production target for the first time in months.
One of the two, Blairmont Estate has also announced that it will be sending the first shipment of 6,000 bags of sugar to Trinidad next week.
“The Estate is aiming to produce not more than 10% of its total sugar production as raw bulk sugar…at present the Estate is producing 29,000 bags of sugar for our CARICOM markets which attracts premium prices, with the first shipment of 6,000 bags leaving for Trinidad next week. We are also packaging 5 kg sugar for the CARICOM markets and will commence packaging 1 kg and 2 kg sugar by the 20th of March when materials for those packaging sizes will be available. Bulk sugar has to be in our rearview mirror,” Estate manager Hutton Griffith (Jr) told Stabroek News.
He explained that the last time his estate reached its weekly target was the week ending November 16, 2019.
“We unfortunately did not achieve any targets in 2020 for various reasons,” he shared after explaining that a total of 1143 tonnes was produced. The week’s target was 1077 tonnes.
According to Griffith the achievement was due primarily to the efforts of workers especially factory workers who achieved 139 grinding hours.
Chief Executive Officer Sasenarine Singh came in for praise since he ensured that the estate received sufficient cane transport tractors which was one of the resources most lacking in 2020. The estate now has nine such tractors as opposed to the three to four which were operational in 2020.
“The efforts made by cane harvesters during this week is notable as we suffered from heavy rains on Wednesday last which resulted in conditions becoming difficult not only for burning of canes but also for harvesting manually, semi-mechanically with Bell loaders and mechanically with the billet cane harvester,” Griffith explained.
At Albion the week saw a production of 1,838 tonnes as against a target of 1,799.
Estate Manager Shiv Persaud was also full of praise for his workers. He told Stabroek News that the labour turnout was really good.
Also useful was repairs to necessary equipment and the weather.
“During this period we are having colder nights and hotter days which leads to the cane storing sugar more efficiently…so we find the cane quality is showing up better,” Persaud explained.
He added that currently the estate is harvesting “carry over crop” which is the cane from the last season which was not harvested. The expectation is that the new cane harvest will be of an even better quality making it likely that production will continue to improve.
Griffith is also hopeful that his estate will return to the days of meeting targets consistently and earning incentives.
“I would like to encourage able-bodied persons in our Region (Mahaica-Berbice) and even further afield to come in and join us, be a part for GuySuCo- Blairmont Estate. We will be striving for the achievement of our target every single week. We will not drop the ball this time, we will not break our momentum,” he declared.
According to the manager his estate is engineering itself to become one of GuySuCo’s profit centres with heavy investment from the Corporation expected to maximize production of bagged and packaged sugar.
