–harvesters’ attendance reaches 80% as conditions remain favourable for work
GUYANA’S largest sugar-producing estate, the Albion/Port Mourant Sugar Estate, continues to break production records, churning out a total of 2,021 tonnes of sugar for the week ending March 20, 2021.
According to information from the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), sugar production at the Albion estate continues to soar, as the estate moves into its fifth week of the first crop of 2021.
“As of March 20, 2021, the Albion/Port Mourant Estate produced a total of 6,890 MT of sugar, achieving 92 per cent of its targeted production for the crop to date, but intends to ramp up efforts aggressively to achieve its budgeted production targets,” the sugar corporation said in a statement on Monday.
This achievement comes immediately after the estate’s second successful achievement of its weekly production target on March 20, 2021, which surpassed its weekly target of 1,999 by 22 tonnes.
The Albion/Port Mourant Sugar Estate is tasked with producing 50.6 per cent of the corporation’s first-crop sugar production target, which stands at 42,608 tonnes. Agriculture Manager of Albion/Port Mourant Estate, Mohendranauth Budhram, said high workers’ morale along with several significant interventions made for this crop have boosted production output.
“Everyone is working together as a team not only to achieve our sugar-production target, but also our tillage and replanting programmes. Achieving our tillage and replanting programmes will pave the way for improved sugar production for the year 2022 and onwards.
“The workers are very motivated and we have seen an improvement in both attendance and productivity, particularity from our cane harvesters. The estate has two gangs cutting for bell- loading operations where over 300 punts are being loaded daily. This has contributed significantly towards enhancing cane supply to the factory, thus enabling us to achieve two weekly production targets so far,” Budhram said.
The commencement of the first crop of 2021, especially during the period March 14 -19, 2021, one week after the successful achievement of its weekly performance target on March 6, 2021, the estate recorded an average of 66 per cent harvesters’ attendance for the week; however, for the latter three days of the period, same had increased to over 80 per cent.
Budhram further said that workers at the estate are jubilant about the use of the billet harvester, which, coupled with improvements in the cane-transport route, have also resulted in reduced time taken to transport the harvested cane to the factory (Burn to Grinding Interval).
This, he explained, has resulted in less tonnage of harvested sugar cane required to produce higher tonnages of sugar.
“Our TC/TS continues to get better and a major contributing factor towards this has been our improved BGI. The factory must also be singled out for achieving 142.5 grinding hours for week ending March 20, 2021 and all factory staff and workers must also be commended,” Budhram said.
The two other grinding estates, Blairmont and Uitvlugt, have also achieved their weekly productions targets on two occasions for the first crop of 2021.
