High employee turnout and good weather have been credited for the Uitvlugt Estate exceeding its weekly production target by 4%.
This is a first for the estate for the 2022 crop season.
This achievement will see employees who worked 80% or more days available for that week benefiting from an additional tax-free day’s pay.
Stabroek News gathered from a source that the mood on the Estate is upbeat since workers were able to surpass the production target this week.
The source went on to say that the factory’s performance has improved significantly since July 2022 and the only challenge now remains the rate of harvesting by the private cane farmers which is lower than expected. Some 50% of the fields which supply the Uitvlugt Estate are cultivated by private farmers on the West Demerara.
Since March of this year, the estate’s factory had been shut due to mechanical issues. This meant that for the first crop, from a target of 4,000 tonnes, the estate was only able to produce a mere 66 tonnes.
Uitvlugt Estate had been given the target of producing at least 25 per cent of the sugar expected from this crop.
When the turbine gear broke, the factory halted operations. Estate Manager, Yudhisthira Mana had said that US-based Nexus Engineering was commissioned to fabricate parts to replace the broken turbine gearbox.
A source had previously told this newspaper that the gear had to be replaced but sourcing a replacement proved a challenge since the manufacturer has gone out of business.
According to Mana, “The part that was damaged in the factory is one that is over 50 years old. It is one that normally don’t be on ordering and safe keep because [it has] rarely been damaged, and so to say just have one on standby to replace, we don’t normally have that.”
Uitvlugt Estate commenced its second crop July 17 after not being able to grind for the first crop of the year. The main turbine was fixed in time for the second crop.
The second crop of 2022 has a target of 10,866 metric tonnes and the Estate has already cleared some 70% of that, a source familiar with the estate’s operation revealed to Stabroek News.
