Sugar packaging plants from Enmore will be split between Blairmont and Albion facilities as the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) aims to reposition itself as a value added producer, a reliable source told Stabroek News.
Plans are in place for the construction of a state-of-the-art packaging facility at Albion Estate, which will accommodate four packaging plants and will include a plant from the Enmore facility.
According to a reliable source, GuySuCo has already procured three packaging plants from the United Kingdom. These plants are expected to arrive by the end of this year in the country.
The source further informed that with the new plants, sugar will be transferred from the factory straight onto the packaging line.
Of the three plants procured, one will be placed at the Blairmont Packaging Plant while the two others will placed at Albion.
“What we are trying to do is bring up the capacity at Blairmont from producing 9,000 metric tonnes to 15,000 metric tonnes of packaged sugar. So in the expansion, there will be three plants a Blairmont, the one from Enmore, one of the new ones and the one currently there,” the source familiar with the expansion works related.
In an advertisement earlier this month in the Guyana Chronicle, the sugar corporation invited qualified companies to submit bids for the construction of the building to house the packaging plant.
Jobs
The source told Stabroek News that the construction phase for the building that will house the packaging plants, will create at least two hundred jobs.
And in the post-construction period, jobs will be created for approximately 50 persons in the areas of maintenance, machine fitters, and production staff.
Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, previously told Stabroek News “…This [deal] is with the packaging plant and we were thinking to relocate it to Albion because Albion is the premier estate grinding sugar… I don’t know why people blowing the thing out of proportion… Whatsoever was there [East Demerara Estate] remain in place we didn’t interfere with nothing else.”
The life of the Enmore packaging plant will come to an end by the last quarter of this year. The plan to lease the building housing the packaging plant to an oil & gas enterprise has prompted questions about the fate of the East Demerara sugar estate and the decision-making of the government and GuySuCo. There had been no prior notification to the public that the building housing the plant would be transformed into a machining shop and major stakeholders such as the sugar union, GAWU were caught by surprise.
Following the signing of a deal between local mechanical manufacturer, Guysons and its United States partner, equipment manufacturer K&B Industries, and government, the public learnt that the packaging plant would be relocated.
The Enmore packaging plant had been built in 2011 at a cost of US$12 million with part-financing from the European Union. It had been played up as a money spinner and a lifeline for the industry.
