Multiple sources have confirmed that the Enmore Packaging Plant is still to be reassembled at the Albion Estate nearly a year after it was controversially moved to make way for an oil and gas fabrication facility.
The building to house the plant at Albion has been at a standstill, leaving senior officials and workers concerned as to what is transpiring.
In March, 2022, forging ahead with its plan to relocate the Enmore Packaging Plant, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) had advertised for the construction of a building to house it at the Albion Estate located in Region Six.
In the advertisement, the sugar corporation invited qualified companies to submit bids for the construction of the building to house the packaging plant.
However, sources within GuySuCo this week said that so far works have only commenced on the “foundation” of the building which was supposed to house the packaging plant.
“I know works were done on the foundation but nothing else”, the source said.
Another source added, “No, I don’t see any work going on.”
GuySuCo’s public relations department when contacted for an update on the progress of works so far told the Sunday Stabroek that the Acting Chief Executive Officer identified as Vishnu Panday would have to be contacted. However, several efforts to contact Panday via phone and email proved futile.
Stabroek News had reported two years ago that the sugar packaging plants from Enmore would be split between the Blairmont and Albion facilities as GuySuCo aimed to reposition itself as a value-added producer.
Plans were also in place for the construction of a state-of-the-art packaging facility at Albion Estate, which would accommodate four packaging plants and would include a plant from the Enmore facility.
According to a reliable source, GuySuCo then had already procured three packaging plants from the United Kingdom.
The source had 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 was to be placed at the Blairmont Packaging Plant while the two others were expected to be placed at the Albion location.
In 2022 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 Enmore packaging plant would be transformed into a fabrication facility for the oil & gas industry. In the venture, the company would take possession of 55 acres of EDE lands.
Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha had previously told Stabroek News that the deal does not “interfere with the estate.”
“…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] remains in place we didn’t interfere with nothing else,” he had said.
When asked if moving the packaging plant machinery would be problematic, the Minister responded in the negative saying that all components could be taken apart and reassembled.
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.
