Uitvlugt Estate ends 2nd crop with 18,600 tonnes sugar

With just about two weeks remaining in the second crop, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) has announced that the Uitvlugt, West Coast Demerara (WCD) factory recently wrapped up its production cycle with just about 18.5 tonnes of sugar.
To date, GuySuCo has produced 85,531 tonnes of sugar and it is on course to achieving 89,000 tonnes before the crop closes. On this note, Uitvlugt Estate was the first to wrap up production for the second crop with a total of 18,599.4 tonnes.
Uitvlugt Manager Yudhisthira Mana explained that while the Estate experienced several challenges, employees must be commended for working diligently to harvest all of the available sugar cane. He added that there are no canes to be carried over into the first crop of 2021.
The Uitvlugt Estate cultivates and manages a total of 6006 hectares of sugar cane of which several members of the Private Cane Farmers’ Association are controlling 1750 Hectares.

In outlining the challenges of the second crop, the Estate Manager informed that as a result of the massive factory downtime earlier in the crop (some 430 hours mainly due to lack of spares), sugar cane grinding was stalled for more than eight days which impacted the tonnes cane to tonnes sugar ratio.
However, all technical issues are actively being addressed going forward with the support of $3 billion in capital investments from the Government of Guyana.
In 2021, there will be a continuation of these capital investments after three years of minimal investments under the prior Administration.
During the latter stage of harvesting, sugar production at the estate was also threatened due to the inclement weather that prevailed, resulting in the fields being inundated and the inability to burn the canes before harvesting and operation of the Bell loaders.
The corporation assured that all measures would be taken to improve both infrastructure and other conditions for 2021 and beyond. At present, Uitvlugt Estate employs a total of 1403 workers.
Back in November, GuySuCo said that the entire week of rainfall at the beginning of the month was to be blamed for it missing its production target of 90,000 tonnes sugar.

Back in 2016, the former APNU/AFC closed the Wales Estate, and the following year, shut down the Enmore, Rose Hall and Skeldon Estates, putting over 7000 sugar workers on the breadline.
The downsizing of the sugar industry saw only the Uitvlugt, Blairmont and Albion Estates being in operation. The assets of the closed estates were put under the control of the Special Purpose Unit of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) for divestment.
The corporation is eyeing the reopening of Enmore and Rose Hall Estates by 2022. It is expected that the Rose Hall factory will be the first to become operational, while the Skeldon factory will be returned to operation by 2023. The Wales factory will be divested.