Usually, news about the sugar industry is dominated by ASR/BSI. But, now in its sixth harvest, Santander is growing production every year. And while they are still not profitable, the company says they're getting there. Today, to announce the launch of its 145 day long harvest season, Santander's bosses held a press conference via Zoom. They said rains delayed the start of the crop, but there are many positive growth indicators:
David Rodriguez, C.F.O., Santander
"For us it's a new year where we are expecting between 15%-20% increase in production volume. We also thank God and Belize and the government for the opportunity of doing this new harvest. We have had some delays at the beginning of the year because of a lot of rains that delay us quite some days. Our key data for the 2021 harvest is seven hundred and fifty metric tonnes of cane - that is approximately a sixteen percent increase compared to 2020 harvest season. Seventy-five metric tonnes of sugar; thirty percent increase in production. We also expect close to 300 metric tonnes of molasses and we expect to dispatch to the national grid 37.5 kilowatt hour. The other news that we have is that this year we are increasing, expanding our export terminal in Big Creek, we are expanding our storage capacity in molasses and later in the year we are planning to expanding our sugar storage capacity. So we can dispatch larger vessels that are going to benefit not only Belize but all the stakeholders in our industry."
