GuySuCo for its first crop of 2024 has produced just over 6, 737 tonnes of sugar as opposed to the 16,000 tonnes targeted.
The poor return has been mainly due to the Albion Estate not contributing to production in the first crop due to a fire which occurred in February.
Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha last week while confirming that the replanting of cane had commenced at the Skeldon Estate also said that there were several issues encountered in the first crop. He said, “We have a number of setbacks, first crop of this year our target was around 16,000 tonnes but we eventually end up with approximately 6,400 tonnes.”
This, he said was due to a number of factors which included the El Niño issue which drastically affected the industry. “But since then we did a number of activities to enhance the corporation.”
With a target of 100,000 tonnes this year, Mustapha who seemed optimistic had said that they will be working to achieve this with major work expected to be done in the second crop which will soon commence. “If we work together and we have all the systems in place then I am very optimistic that we can achieve the target of over 100,000 tonnes.”
Efforts to contact the acting CEO of GuySuCo, Vishnu Panday for a breakdown of the production for the various estates and several other updates within the industry proved futile yesterday.
However, according to a source within the industry, Blairmont Estate produced just around 2084 tonnes of sugar for the first crop, while Rose Hall Estate produced 1779 tonnes and the Uitvlugt Estate produced 2874 tonnes.
The source yesterday said that the Albion Estate did not contribute to the overall production of the first crop due to the fire at the power plant of the Albion Sugar Factory which caused serious damage.
In February GuySuCo had said that the preliminary report on the fire “revealed serious damage to crucial electrical infrastructure in the Power-house, including the 4 megawatts generating control panel, 2.5 megawatts generating control panels, 700 kilowatts low voltage cap set control panel, 3.3 kv interbus transformer, interbus transformer barker, a sections of the low voltage bus bar and several major section of the circuitry”.
GuySuCo had said that at a minimum “large sections of the wiring have to be replaced along with the damaged panels, and all of the breakers, and other components, in order to return the factory to a state of readiness to grind sugar in the First Crop of 2024”.
They were then in the process of concluding the needs assessment and was working to procure the necessary replacement panels and other items.
Meanwhile, at a meeting held at the Skeldon Estate over the last weekend, Mustapha stated that they have already started to mechanize 5,000 hectares of land at the Skeldon Estate with re planting of canes already started. “We are hoping that by the end of this year we can plant substantial amount of canes in that 5,000 hectares and also the intention is to complete an additional 5,000 hectares from Skel-don that we will crushed at Albion and Rose Hall factories that have the capacity to crush more canes.”
He said, while this is being done they are working to improve the overall performance of the two factories.
Noting the investments being made by the government to improve the sugar industry, Mustapha said that they are hopeful that by the end of the year there will be 60% mechanization of the industry, “We are purchasing new machinery harvesters, we are outsourcing planting because there is a problem with labor too and what we are doing we are trying to modernize the industry so that we can harvest and plant mechanically.”
Since it came into office in August of 2020, there have been massive injections by the government into the sugar industry but the returns have been poor.
