Exposing FSC lies

[posted 1 July 2010,1630]

FSC chief executive Deo Saran’s attempts to blame cane farmers for breakdowns at the Lautoka Mill since it began crush last week, is simply ridiculous.

The mill has had a stop start operation since it started crush on 24 June, breaking down on several occasions. Crush figures for the week were extremely poor.

The mill came to a standstill at 9am on 30 June and was out for about 8 hours due to heater problems and choke in the conveyor. Today (July 1) the mill broke down for four hours due to mechanical/electrical problems and wet bagasse.

Why then is Mr. Deo Saran complaining about short supply of cane to the Lautoka Mill? How can these mill breakdowns be attributed to short supply of cane?

It is true that farmers are being cautious and are likely to supply cane in dribs and drabs until the mill is fixed. But FSC has only itself to blame for this situation.

Last year growers incurred heavy losses running into millions of dollars when half the cane supplied to the mills was wasted because of chronic milling problems. Lautoka Mill performance last year was one of the worst in history.

Rarawai Mill also got to a bad start this season. It came to a halt on the first day of crush, Monday 29 June. It stopped crushing one hour after the mills began rolling and has still not resumed crush on a full scale basis, four days later.

In the first two days Rarawai crushed only 400 tonnes. No sugar was transported from the mill to the bulk terminal in Lautoka.

Meanwhile, information obtained from our sources show that Penang Mill had crushed 31,914 tonnes of cane from 1-29 June, making 2355 tonnes of sugar and 1205 tonnes of molasses. The TCTS ratio is 13.6:1 whereas FSC had indicated a TCTS ratio of 10.5:1. This means that the farmer is losing 3.1 tonnes of cane for every tonne of sugar made.

Considering the poor start to the mills, one can hardly blame the farmers if they are wary of cutting cane for fear it will meet the same fate as last year. If FSC wants a constant supply of cane, it has to restore the confidence of the growers by ensuring that there are no further mill breakdowns due to mechanical problems.

Meanwhile, Deo Saran is simply deluding himself, and fooling no one, with his claim that the upgraded four sugar mills now have the capacity to crush 4 million tonnes of cane.

The truth is that all four mills together have a crushing capacity of 134,000 tonnes a week if they provide optimum performance given the 5% stoppage time allowed under international norm for mill breakdowns.

This means that at best the four mills can crush only 3 million tonnes of cane within the optimum crushing season of 26 weeks.

We all know that last year, when upgrading works were 80% complete, the four mills could not even handle 2 million tonnes of cane efficiently.

Instead of building castles in the air, FSC needs to take a reality check of its actual performance and shortcomings. And not use farmers as scapegoats for its own deficiencies and lack of competence.