The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) will be embarking on producing value added products with the hopes of revitalizing the industry and make it more profitable.
Chief Executive Officer of GuySuCo, Sasenarine Singh during a tour of the Blairmont Estate on Wednesday explained that GuySuCo currently produces three main products –packaged sugar, bagged sugar and bulk sugar, however, the industry suffers a loss with the production of bulk sugar and as a result GuySuCo will now be focusing on producing value added products which will be exported to the Caribbean and North American markets.
“The whole vision of GuySuCo is to move up the value chain as fast as we can within the constraints of finances,” Singh said.
GuySuCo will also be focusing on short term, medium term and long term plans. The short term plan Singh explained is that the Enmore Estate which recently reopened the packaging plant will primarily focus on producing packaged products for the local market while the Blairmont Estate will focus exclusively on exporting the packaged products.
Singh highlighted that the first production from the Enmore Estate has already been sold and over the next 18 months the focus will be to push the packaged products to international markets.
The Government on Monday released $3B to GuySuCo of which $2.2B will be used to reopen the Rosehall, Enmore and Skeldon Estates and the remaining $0.8B to recapitalise the current estates – Uitvulgt, Blairmont and Albion.
“We are going to rebuild the sugar industry brick by brick and prove to those people who want to destroy it that it can come back again,” the GuySuCo CEO said.
The medium term plan Singh said is to secure private/public partnership to help build the market for the value added products such as refined sugar, ethanol and rum manufacturing.
“Economically, GuySuCo has been one of the greatest contributor to the human development of the people of Guyana and because of that GuySuCo has to get some support from the people of Guyana in these time so it can recapitalise and reenergise.”
The long term plan will be a five-year-turn-around plan to implement efficient ways to keep the sugar industry afloat as time changes.
“Do we need a co-generation plant or a refinery? Do we need a distillery, an ethanol plant? Do we need a combination of these and what is the right model we need to get to make this work?
Estate Manager, Hutton Griffith said only three packaging lines are operating at the Blairmont Estate. The three lines have a capacity of packaging roughly 65-70 tonnes of sugar per day.
“The problem is our factory produces an average of 200-220 tonnes of sugar per day and therefore you will see that the packaging plant as it is will not be able to package all of our sugar,” the Manager said.
The Manager said another packaging line will make a huge difference to the production at the estate.
“I would love to see Blairmont move to packaging all and every grain of sugar. The reason for that is for use to be reliable or efficient and sustainable we need to go to value added,” the Manager said.
