$600M spent to rehab control room destroyed by fire at Albion Sugar Factory

…house approved $4B for GuySuCo

The Government has expended some $600 million on the rehabilitation of the control room at the Albion Sugar Factory, which was destroyed by a fire back earlier this year.
The February 3rd fire at the Albion Estate destroyed millions of dollars in specialised pieces of equipment in the control room resulting in the disruption of the operations at the sugar factory.
On Friday, Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha told the National Assembly that critical repairs have been executed to prepare the factory to resume operations.
“Only two days, Albion burnt cane to start the crop and that factory will commence grinding. And we spent approximately $600 million to rehabilitate the entire power house because of the fire,” the minister noted.
He was at the time responding to questions from Opposition Member of Parliament, Vinceroy Jordan, who also raised concerns about the monies spent.
Jordan cited a preliminary report from the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), which had stated the fire caused serious damage to crucial electrical infrastructure in the Powerhouse including the four megawatts generating control panel, 2.5 megawatts generating control panels, 700 kilowatts low voltage cap set control panel, 3.3 kv interbus transformer, interbus transformer barker, a section of the low voltage bus bar and several major section of the circuitry.
At the time, the sugar corporation had estimated damages to be around $50 million.
Based on that figure from GuySuCo, the Opposition parliamentarian questioned the spending of the $600 million to carry out the repairs.
In response, the agriculture minister committed to providing a breakdown of how and on what the money was spent to repair the powerhouse.
Meanwhile, Mustapha went onto note that preliminary investigations revealed that the fire was electrical in origin.
MP Jordan enquired whether that cause was as a result of any neglect. “We want to know, was it as a result of overheating, negligence. What is it?”
The agriculture minister maintained the fire was “…electrical in origin. I’m not an electrician… They said they had some feedback power into the system that caused overheating and caused the fire.”
The control system that was destroyed plays a significant part in the factory’s operation. It controls the devices that grind the cane to extract the juice and also the elements that lead to the boilers. The control system is also responsible for regulating the temperature of the boilers. The system, which is computerised, controls most of the mechanical parts of the factory.
GuySuCo had noted at the time that large sections of the wiring would have to be replaced along with the damaged panels, and all of the breakers, and other components, in order to return the factory to a state of readiness to grind sugar.
With the fire halting operations, the Albion Factory missed the grinding of sugar in the First Crop of 2024. In fact, the sugarcanes from that estate had to be sent to the Rose Hall Factory to be grinded.
This fire came just after GuySuCo had announced critical upgrades to the infrastructural and equipment components of the Albion Sugar Estate have been undertaken to ensure greater efficiency this year.
The sugar company noted that 36 bridges were rehabilitated to improve access to the canes. Some of these bridges were unusable for over 12 years.
Further, 22 tractors that were down owing to a shortage of spares were all repaired, and 95 per cent of the field machines were re-fitted with new tyres during October to increase availability and reliability.
The estate had also noted that this year, it would continue to prioritise innovation and efficiency to further enhance its productivity and streamline its production process.

Subvention
These issues were raised in the National Assembly on Friday when the Committee of Supply was considering a $4.042 billion supplementary funding for GuySuCo, which was eventually approved.
A disaggregation of this figure showed that under Irrigation, whopping $397 million was for fuel and another $81 million for other aspects of the D&I works while issues relating to machinery (excavators and tractors) amounted to $45 million along with other costs.
Minister Mustapha disclosed that the local sugar industry suffered from the effects of the El Niño phenomenon that resulted in some stunted growth in sugarcanes hence they had to replant crops.
He further cited a report from the International Sugar Organization, which projected the global sugar deficit for 2024-2025 to be 4.36 million metric tonnes of sugar, that is, 47 per cent or 1.4 million metric tonne reduction in global production.
“We have this serious problem. We had the stunted growth of canes… We are working on these problems… Almost 45 per cent now of the industry’s cultivation have been mechanized, where we have now built the broad beds. We have started the re-cultivation of canes back at Skeldon [Estate]. We’ll do 5,000 hectares of cane at Skeldon. We are now continuing planting at Rose Hall and Albion [estates],” Mustapha noted.
Only last week, Mustapha had told the National Assembly that GuySuCo has produced some 6,738 tonnes of sugar for its first crop of 2024, falling short of the initial target of 16,000 tonnes. He explained that this shortfall is a result of the devastating effects of the prolonged drought, which “significantly restricted the growth of canes”.
In a written response to opposition queries, the agriculture minister provided a breakdown of the production at various estates. He revealed that the Uitvlugt Sugar Estate produced 2874.3 tonnes while Blairmont produced 2084.8 tonnes and Rose Hall with the lowest, 1779.8 tonnes.
Last year, GuySuCo accomplished a noteworthy milestone by exceeding its yearly sugar output target of 60,000 tonnes. In the sugar sector, 28 per cent growth was recorded last year. This was a result of GuySuCo having produced 60,204 tonnes in 2023, compared with 47,049 tonnes in 2022. (G8)