The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) yesterday announced that the Albion/Port Mourant Estate and Blairmont Estate surpassed their weekly production target during the week ending July 29, 2023, by 12%.
A release from GuySuCo said that the 2nd Crop of 2023 is in its second week of production and it is reassuring that the respective teams on the estates have harnessed a number of strategies to boost the turnout and realise the potential of the new equipment bought by the Government of Guyana since December 2020.
These operational interventions, coupled with good weather played a major role in allowing the two estates to surpass their weekly target. Workers at those Estates will secure additional remuneration with the weekly performance incentive. The second crop target was not provided in the release.
Estate Manager Yudhisthira Mana at Albion/Port Mourant said the achievement was possible due to mainly the better turnout of workers. The estate team will be visiting the villages to keep the workers and their families apprised of the opportunities in the industry. One such visit was conducted on July 25, 2023 in the villages of Manchester, Lancaster and Liverpool with the workers union, a release from the union said.
Threbhowan Shiwprasad said the achievement was possible due to the better quality cane this crop compared to 2022 and better turnout by the workers. The Estate team visited Bath Settlement on July 28, 2023 to interact with the families of workers and to encourage a better turnout, the release said.
Qualified workers who worked 80 percent or more days available for that week will benefit from another weekly production incentive scheme, which allows tax-free incentives when an estate achieves its weekly production target.
The production target of the first crop this year was surpassed and the second crop target is expected to push the annual production over 60,000 metric tonnes, the release said. The corporation had set a low first crop figure of 16,000 for 2023 after failing to meet the first crop target in 2022 of 20,261 metric tonnes. The corporation only managed to produce 13,076 metric tonnes of sugar in the first crop of 2022.
GuySuCo was also unable to achieve its 2022 second crop target of 40,255 metric tonnes of sugar. Production figures seen by this newspaper in mid-December last year indicated that it fell short of its target by 6,585 metric tonnes. The total crop production figure stood at 33,770 metric tonnes.
There was no word in yesterday’s press release about the other functioning estate, Uitvlugt on the West Demerara.
The press release said that all hands are on deck to complete the final adjustments to the Rose Hall Factory as the Corporation prepares to commence grinding of sugar in mid-September 2023.
