AGRICULTURE Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, told the Guyana Chronicle that sugar production for the second crop has been encouraging to date. “We have had encouraging production from all the factories,” he said in an invited comment.

Asked about the performance of the Skeldon Sugar Factory, one of eight sugar factories in operation, he noted that the expectations from the Skeldon Factory have to be put into perspective.
He said: “Skeldon was designed to do 110,000 tonnes, but no one had said that Skeldon would produce 110,000 it was designed to do by 2016.”
“We no longer have that plan. I should say that up front. When it was designed, it was not only the factory capacity it was dependent on producing cane, but the cane production has not occurred, that is because we haven’t opened up all of the land, so we are changing those dates to 2020 for reaching a cane production that will sustain 110,000 tonnes.”
The minister added that a point that is often missed is that the factory was designed by Booker Tate and built by the Chinese.
“I need to say that because everybody says the Chinese. The Chinese built a part too that was designed by Booker Tate and designed a factory in accordance to those designs, but it is not Chinese problem,” Ramsammy said.
He added that the designs had flaws that have been discovered and these are being corrected.
The minister explained: “One of the design flaws was that you design a factory to produce 110,000 tonnes then you also have to feed it with enough cane and it was designed to feed at 350 tonnes per hour.
“This is the system that lifts the cane from the punts, it is a punt dumper system, and that conveys the cane to the chopping blocks etc. so you need the factory to have a delivery rate of cane of 350 tonnes per hour. But the design that was done could not have attained that level. Part of the problem that we had in the early years, when it was working, it was delivering 190 tonnes per hour instead of 350 tonnes.”
Dr. Ramsammy stated that currently, due to efforts to correct the design flaws, the factory is expected to close the year close to the needed 350-tonne mark.
“We have made progress. The number of hours that the factory was working before, and I will not be able to give you the exact number, is only a fraction of the total number of hours available,” he said.
Ramsammy added that Skeldon’s technology is new and this year the factory has been able to double its operation hours.
To this end, Dr. Ramsammy expressed confidence that the Skeldon Factory will be able to meet its target this year.
The first crop was successful, surpassing the 75,000 tonnes target, bringing in about 80,000 tonnes. The overall target for 2014 has been moved from 216,000 tonnes to 219,000 tonnes.
Sugar production came in at a dismal 186,500 tonnes for 2013, but Guyana has been taking steps to turn around the sugar industry and hopes to meet the 300,000 tonne-target soon, with a projection that the sector will reach its 400,000-tonne goal by 2020.

(By Vanessa Narine)