Sorry state of affairs at Penang Mill

[posted 16 June 2010, 1540]

Cane farmers are losing out badly because of the chronic mill failures at Penang. Since the mill began crushing on June 1, it has had four major stoppages each lasting over 24 hours.

We gave details of breakdowns in our web stories of 3 and 8 June. Up until 10 June, the mill crushed 6422 tonnes of cane but made only 280 tonnes of sugar on a TCTS of 23:1. It is taking almost 3 times as much cane to make a tonne of sugar which effectively means a loss to the industry running into millions.

If the mill had been running efficiently, it would have manufactured 700 tonnes of sugar from 6422 tonnes of cane on a TCTS of 9:1. In other words, 420 tonnes of sugar went to waste. In money terms, it is worth around $0.5million.

The latest breakdown occurred on 9 June and ever since the mill has functioned on a stop-start basis. In its sixteenth (16) day of crush, it has chalked up an aggregate stoppage time of 11 days. In other words it has remained shut for 11 out of 16 days!

Meanwhile, farmers have had to house and feed the harvesting gang members who were recruited from outside Ra. The cost to them of having to retain idle labour is back-breaking. It is a loss which they will have to sustain themselves - as any form of compensation is ruled out by FSC.

NFU is reliably informed that none of the four mills is up to it and that there is likely to be serious disruption to the harvesting, transportation and milling of cane this season again - a repeat of the chaos the farmers faced the previous season.

Notwithstanding all this, the rhetoric continues as both the Sugar Ministry and FSC engage in a full scale misinformation campaign about the real (sad) state of the industry.