Persaud awaiting evaluation from GuySuCo Board
MINISTER of Agriculture Robert Persaud said he is awaiting a decision from the board and management of the Guyana Sugar Corporation on a number of proposals for foreign management of the beleaguered Skeldon factory. The minister made known his disappointment about the pace of the work at Skeldon at a meeting with cane farmers at the Red House yesterday. At the meeting were scores of private cane farmers and executives of the sugar corporation.

“The reality is that we need expertise in place to fix some of the snags, some of the issues that are complicating the problems at Skeldon,” he said.

“We just don’t have it in house. There is a plan to have those problems corrected, because I am disappointed, I am dissatisfied in terms of what is taking place at Skeldon,” he said.

“It is unfair to the wider industry. It is unfair to the private cane farmers who have invested. But those problems will be corrected. One way or the other, they will be corrected; and already we have seen some efforts in this regard. I know the concerns, and already they have been given attention,” he said.
In statements some weeks ago, the minister said that the government is contemplating engaging foreign help to manage the Skeldon factory, since there is a dearth of relevant local skills.
Speaking to members of the media yesterday, Persaud said that there are various options on the table, and that the board and management of the company are presently considering these.
“There are various options, looking at what model to take in getting the expertise. As you heard today, already we have foreign expertise supporting the work there. Whether it is total management or just bringing skills, I leave that to the board and management to decide,” the minister said.
“The goal is to get the factory performing to the level that it was designed and built for.
Speaking at the meeting, CEO of GuySuCo, Paul Bhim, said that a study done of the Skeldon plant concluded that the shredder was one of the problematic pieces of equipment. He said that the issues with the shredder did not help the throughput of the factory. “We did work on the shredder and that was very successful. In fact, that aspect of the front end is working quite well,” he said.
Bhim said that the punt dumper, another one of the problematic areas for Skeldon, was not something that the South African consultants had expertise in. But he said that in early November, another group is coming to address and hopefully fix this piece of equipment.
“There are some other aspects of that Bosch study which we would have to implement gradually. As we mentioned before, we cannot stop the factory and fix the problem. We have to wait for the off-crop period. We have to fix the punt dumper in order to increase on the throughput of our factory,” he said.
“You see, it is a huge factory and it should be processing 350 tonnes of cane per hour. Right now it is only doing 250, and even lower at times. So when you have the juice in a huge process house…you tend to lose sugar in the process. If we are going to start now, we need to fix the process with that punt dumper, get the throughput up to about 300 tonnes of cane per hour, in order to have juice flowing around the process house and reduce the losses from what is called inversion. That’s the plan we have at the moment, in terms of this upcoming other crop,” the CEO said.
He said that there are some other issues which, while they cannot be dealt with at this out- of-crop season, they will be looked at between the first and second crops next year. “We are getting quite a bit of help, free of cost, from Tate & Lyle, our biggest customer in Europe. They are quite experienced and can obtain expertise quite easily,” he said.
However, despite the Skeldon woes, the minister said that the general outlook for the sector continues to be a bright one. “We have some of the best prices internationally. We just cannot have enough sugar to supply. People from as far off as the Middle East, Africa and Asia are turning up at our doors, looking to buy sugar. Some of them even want to invest in the sugar industry. Already we have received proposals from persons for them to come and produce sugar in Guyana. So there is much interest externally in our own sugar industry,” the minister said.
But he said that for these investments to be possible, the industry will have to manage itself better and improve the culture that presently exists. This, he said, requires a total buy in and collaboration and consistency.
“I want to assure you that Government will continue to give those particular areas the type of attention that is necessary,” the minister said. He said that there is no easy fix for the industry. “When you get a blow like you got with the EU price cuts of $10B, you don’t recover just like that. But already we are seeing signs of improvement,” the minister said.
At Red House yesterday, Persaud said that government has contributed another $5M to a revolving fund geared to assist the smaller cane farmers, thereby doubling the fund’s capacity to $10M. The fund is meant to ensure that the cane farmers are able to cultivate more acreage and thereby see to the company producing more sugar.