Another disastrous week for cane crush

[posted 1 Oct 2009,17.00]

The four sugar mills were down once again last week crushing only 89,000 tonnes of cane against a target of 130,000 tonnes. This is 45,000 tonnes short of the weekly crushing capacity of the four mills.

The Lautoka and Rarawai mills are already seven weeks behind in their season to date crush figures. Labasa mill is now four weeks behind, while Penang is on target because of a substantially reduced crop size this season -
crop estimates were revised down from 220,000 tonnes to 170,000 tonnes.

Figures for tonnes of sugar manufactured are still not available as FSC and the Sugar Ministry are refusing to release these. However, it has been established that sugar make is extremely low on account of badly malfunctioning mills. The national TCTS average is reportedly a high of 15:1 ie. 15 tonnes of cane to a tonne of sugar which is almost twice the normal TCTS ratio of 8.5:1.

As a consequence of the high TCTS ratio, farmers are running losses totalling tens of million of dollars. Upto the date of the last sugar shipment which left the port of Lautoka late last week, farmers had delivered 1.1 million tonnes of cane which shold have manufactured 128,000 tonnes of sugar but FSC only managed 80,000 tonnes on account of the hopelessly low extraction rate of its mills.

This means FSC cheated the industry of 48,000 tonnes of sugar worth $53 million of which $37 million would have gone to the cane growers.

This can be converted to a $17.000 per tonne loss sustained by the grower up to the date of the last shipment (23 Sept), on an estimated crop of 2.2 million tonnes this season.

This is a colossal loss by any standards! And will compound to a much higher figure by the end of the season. It can now be clearly understood why the regime is dismantling sugar industry institutions where the growers had a voice and which could hold FSC and the regime to accountability and transparency with regard to milling operations.

The recent arbitrary and autocratic actions of the Sugar Ministry and the total collapse of corporate ethics in the FSC have put the future sustainability of the sugar industry on the line.