GuySuCo to place more emphasis on packaged sugar to help revive industry

By Andrew Carmichael

The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) has acknowledged that one of its major shortcomings has been its reliance on selling bulk sugar.

Under new management now, the Corporation has a change of plan, and will be focusing on marketing more packaged sugar to add value to what it produces.
This was on Wednesday revealed to the media by GuySuCo CEO Sasenarine Singh during a media tour of the Blairmont Estate.
The corporation has refashioned its focus over the past three weeks, and now has a vision to inform its intention of moving up the value chain. This, however, has to be done within the constraints of finance. In addition to that, GuySuCo will be opening three estates which were closed by the last administration.
Singh explained that in order for the Corporation to move up the value chain, it must do away with selling bulk sugar.
Currently, the corporation produces packaged sugar, which the company views as its premium produce bagged sugar, which is sold in 50kg bags and as bulk sugar.
According to the CEO, GuySuCo makes a profit on packaged sugar, but makes a loss on bulk sugar. Hence the vision is to move GuySuCo away from bulk sugar to more value-added products. The Blairmont and Enmore Estates currently produce packaged sugar. In fact, it was only on Tuesday that the Enmore Packaging Plant was reopened. Chief Engineer Vijai Goberdhan led the team to fix the plant at Enmore. The Blairmont factory will be focusing exclusively on the export market, while the Enmore factory will be producing packaged sugar for the local market.
“The other way we will win this battle is by looking at the cross-chain and identifying what are the value-added cost, and celebrate them, and the ones that are not adding value we are going to make those our enemies, and we are going to attack them,” Singh said.
The CEO added that the Corporation will cut spending on nonessentials and focus on the factory, cane fields, and the cane transportation route, thus ensuring that the elements which will bring greater value to GuySuCo are sourced.
On Monday, the Government released $3 billion to GuySuCo for that purpose. Of this amount, $2.2B will go towards reopening three estates which were abandoned, and the remainder will go towards recapitalising the other estates.

Foreign investors
According to the CEO, GuySuCo is currently looking to attract foreign investors, and an investor will be visiting all of the plants in Berbice with the aim of getting private participants into the sugar industry at the value-added level, so that a refinery can be opened.
This is since the Corporation is eyeing the Caribbean market, which imports 200,000 tonnes of white sugar annually from out of the region.
Singh said the Corporation is currently focusing on its business turnaround plan.
“We have selected two consultants to work in the office of the CEO, and I will be leading that effort to ensure that GuySuCo has a five-year turnaround plan which will give us the options on what is the most efficient way to do ‘sugar’ going forward.”
Among the options which could be considered, Singh said, are a co-generation plant, a refinery, a distillery, an ethanol plant, or a combination.
Currently, the Corporation employs in excess of 10,000 persons, and with the reopening of the three estates, a further 3000 are expected to be employed. “So there are thirteen to fourteen thousand families who are dependent on this being a success. If we fail, we will bring great poverty to rural Demerara and rural Berbice,” the CEO noted.
Singh noted that 60 per cent of the workers who lost their jobs when the Wales, Enmore, Rose Hall and Skeldon estates were closed have told the International Labour Organisation that their children were directly affected when the previous administration closed those four estates. Many of them had to take their children out of school. The CEO referred to the closures as a criminal act.
Meanwhile, Blairmont Estate Manager Hutson Griffith has said that even though the intention is for Blairmont to export the sugar it produces, the Packaging Plant currently does not have the capacity to do so. There are only packaging machines, and before the end of the year, there is expected to be a fourth, which will still not be sufficient.
There is only one such plant at Enmore.
The Packaging Plant at Blairmont has the capacity to produce about 70 tons of packaged sugar daily, but the estate produces an average of 220 tons per day.
“So, we see that the packaging plant will not be able to package all of the sugar,” Griffith outlined.