Investor building sugar refinery at Enmore estate- President

The Enmore Sugar Estate on the East Coast of Demerara (ECD) was one of the sugar estates closed by the former APNU+AFC government but as part of revitalising the sugar industry, President Dr. Irfaan Ali announced on Monday that this facility is being converted into a sugar refinery.

Revitalising the sugar sector is one of numerous economic ventures the President said his government is focused on.

“We are investing in the (Guyana Sugar Corporation) because it is going to be made profitable,” the Head of State said at the Private Sector Commission’s annual dinner on Monday night.

And he disclosed that an investor is ready to develop the shuttered Enmore Estate.

“We have an investor, who is in the final stage of the investment decision…, to convert the Enmore Sugar Estate, that is now scrapped, into a sugar refinery to refine the brown sugar there,” the President said.

This refinery would have the capacity to refine about 180,000 metric tonnes of sugar annually and if Guyana cannot supply that entire amount, the President said “we’ll have to fill the gap.”

A refinery is different from a sugar mill since the latter crushes the cane stalks, squeezes the juice from the plant and facilitates the crystallisation of the juice so it turns into raw sugar. A refinery converts that raw sugar into food grade white sugar.

And this isn’t the only venture to boost Enmore’s local economy.

The President previously said Enmore is being developed into an industrial zone and a state-of-the-art machine shop and pipe yard was greenlit there.

The sugar packaging plant apparatus that existed at that estate was moved to Albion, in Region Six (East Berbice- Corentyne) where the President said in 2022 opportunities for more job creation exists.