– SPU head
IN order to become viable on the global market, Guyana’s sugar industry must be transformed into a sustainable one through self-sufficient byproducts; modernised factories and improved management styles.
This is according to Head of the Special Purpose Unit (SPU), Colvin Heath-London who made the comments on Tuesday at a one-day conference hosted by the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU).
The conference was held at the Grand Coastal Hotel and was themed, ‘Sugar too big to fail’. It was attended by Minister of State Joseph Harmon; Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo; GAWU President Komal Chand and other specialists within the agriculture sector.
In the next 18 months, the SPU will be working to complete the implementation of two co-generation plants for cleaner and cheaper energy provision.
In his presentation on ‘Restoring GuySuCo to Viability’ Heath-London discussed this initiative along with other measures that must be taken to propel the sector. He stated that for decades GuySuCo has produced raw products and molasses but, with the pending oil and other associated industries, the sugarcane industry must become sustainable.
The SPU head added that this does not mean that the sugarcane industry must be done away with but rather that it must be made viable again by treating the sector like a business. While in the past raw sugar was the major byproduct of the sugar industry, Heath-London said that there now exists many possibilities for the electricity, through co-generation to emerge as the most profitable byproduct.
“Guyana is at it’s the dawn of the oil and gas sector and some have articulated that natural gas would reduce our energy cost across the nation. This is true but we are caught up in a global era of a push and quest for clean energy which is now heavily intensified globally. We must recognise that the cane sugar industry has been producing and using green energy for the most part of centuries. It must also be recognised that it is cheaper to produce electricity from co-generation than natural gas,” he said.
High electricity cost
His remarks came even as he reminded that Guyana currently has one of the highest electricity cost in the region while biomass energy in the sugar industry can produce prices that rival that of natural gas.
The SPU is now working towards implementing two co-generation plants at the Albion and Uitvlugt estates and to also equip the factories to produce plantation wide and secondary packaging equipment.
“We, the SPU and NICIL, are working with Guysusco to formulate the necessary committees to implement these projects along with our stakeholders. Guysusco has successfully completed feasibility studies in both areas and GuySusCo is working assiduously with the SPU to try to implement these projects as quickly as possible.”
When the opposition leader queried whether the plan for the two co-generators was “wishful thinking” or was approved by the board of GuySuCo and the ministry of agriculture, Heath-London responded:
“GuySuCo, presently, is without an active board…in the very near future there should be another board. But the SPU cannot wait on whether there is a board at GuySuCo or not. When I took this job, there was a board, there was a white paper and there was a three-year plan…what we did as technocrats along with Price Waterhouse is to look at that plan and to try and derive a strategy that would help the industry in the short term to be sustainable.”
The plan, he added, was approved by the previous board and, as such, the government and the SPU has fast tracked the process to the point where they can begin the necessary process towards the eventual implementation stage. He recommend that the pubic pay attention to the lessons learnt at the co-generation plant at Skeldon where they no longer only use gas for electricity generation but wood and residue from the timber industry.
He also stated that organisations must be willing to change old practices and procedures with the use of digital technology; factories must be modernised; facilities must be used to acquire further revenues and the industry must move towards the manufacturing of cane related products.
“The culture of the sugar industry and our support services and management has to be changed. Sugar has been managed [in the past] in a top down, highly autocratic manner masked in traditions and a culture that in these modern times cannot result in success. This primeval structure has to be changed and a flatter, more nimble structure has to be embraced where high-level decision making and problem solving at all levels must be and can be made at real-time at the individual estates,” Heath-London said.
Meanwhile, the SPU Head who has worked in sugar industries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, as future plans are being made, urged retrenched sugar workers to remain strong as issues in the sector are being ironed out.
“We’re working assiduously… to reducing and cushioning the pain of sugar workers through economic and social outreaches. We, the SPU, are presently working at inputs in land distribution for sugar workers that want to be farmers and sugar workers that want to get into other sub-industries,” he said. He added that in the first crop, the Rose Hall contributed significantly with an excess of 30,000 tons of cane sent to Albion. This aiding in the employment of over 500 workers at Rose Hall while several private sector entities are seeking to assist ex-sugar workers at Wales.
