Dear Editor,
Re recent letters /articles in the press on GuySuCo and the Skeldon Sugar Estate SSMP, and as the Chairman of GuySuCo for the period 1993-2003, I would like to give a background to this project.
With the impending phasing out of the European Union preferential sugar prices, GuySuCo developed a Strategic Plan in 1999, a component of which identified the CARICOM market for 110,000 MT of refined sugar. A review of the existing sugar estates then identified Skeldon as the most suitable one for a new factory to produce this quantity of refined sugar for several reasons, including: best climate for growing sugar (driest estate), good field productivity and availability of land for expansion.
To produce 110,000 MT sugar required approximately 30,000 acres of cane of which Skeldon had 10,000 under cultivation at the time, the estate owned an extra 10,000 adjoining acres and interested farmers owned 10,000 acres. A link canal was dug to bring water from the Torani, through Manarabisi, to irrigate these additional lands as well as to provide navigation water to the factory.
There were 2 features of the new factory that were specified: installation of diffusion technology for cane juice preparation and a cogeneration unit to produce and sell electricity that would be generated from bagasse. It was noted that diffusers were being installed in most new sugar factories around the world, because of several advantages: better extraction efficiency, lower power consumption, much lower operating and maintenance costs and most importantly, a significant increase in exportable electricity. Additionally, GuySuCo sent its Heads of Factory and Agricultural Operations to Brazil to evaluate the performance of factories using diffusers and they both highly recommended the technology.
My investigation, after I demitted the office of Chairman, as to why GuySuCo’s diffuser did not perform as expected revealed that the costly mechanical harvesters that were purchased were totally unsuited to our field layouts in that they scooped up earth from the fields along with cane roots, resulting in very inefficient diffuser production because of the presence of cane trash and mud. This also caused diminishing field returns as a lot of cane ratoons had been uprooted. There were other factors such as the deterioration in sugar content from the length of time the billeted cane took to reach the factory. Billeted canes are short pieces from a whole stalk, with each billet having two exposed ends.
The cogeneration component of SSMP was key for profitability, since sugar factories using this technology make more money from producing and selling electricity to the grid than they make from producing sugar. The technology is straightforward: the bagasse must have a pol of 0.84% (higher burnability) and high-pressure boilers along with matching turbines must be installed. The entire system failed at Skeldon and fuel oil was burnt instead to produce power, resulting in other problems associated with the boilers.
To this day, I am unable to identify the persons who changed the design of the factory to produce raw sugar instead of the originally planned refined sugar and their reasons. GuySuCo, at the time when I demitted office, was producing more than 320,000 tons of raw sugar annually and did not need any more of that type of sugar for the markets that it had. I regret that I cannot shed more light for the failure of the SSMP, since many of the other factors, including the signing of the contract for the new factory, occurred after I demitted office.
Sincerely,
Vic Oditt