At this hour, sugar cane farmers in the north and employees of Belize Sugar Industries are completing the last few hours of grinding and sugar production for this current crop season. Tomorrow at 6 a.m., all operations will conclude. Then, the farmers and the millers will enter their respective off-season rituals, including prepping cane fields for next season's cultivation and maintenance work on the Tower Hill factory's equipment.
As viewers are aware, the current crop season had a very rough start, with the loss of 14-days of productivity due to a protest and a blockade by members of the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association, which was staged against the millers. Then, the season had bouts of bad weather that forced operations to halt for some 14 days. As a result, the crop season had to be extended by a month.
Despite those challenges, the sugar industry performed reasonably well, so the millers hosted an end-of-season event to celebrate the small victories. Of Course, the press was invited, and Daniel Ortiz has that story:
With less than a day left in the current crop season, BSI/ASR's management and employees broke bread with farmers in an end-of-crop event called "Sweet Wrap-up". Both the millers and the caneros had a challenging year in the sugar industry, which started with many days of missed commercial opportunities due to the protest and the blockade in the first week of the season.
In fact, today's sugar industry celebration would have happened back in December if that social unrest did not take place.
Olivia Carballo-Avilez, Cane Farmer Relations Manager, ASR/BSI
"Today we are having the end-of-crop sort of wrap-up, a sweet wrap-up. It's our little event, a positive event for our employees and also for the cane truck drivers. Some of them are farmers. Some of them are harvesting group leaders themselves. But we have some hotdogs, we usually have this event at the start of the crop season. Of course, we were unable to do that, but we still want to end off this crop very positively. This is our fifty-fifth crop season, which is very important for us. It's our anniversary of the fifty-fifth year. And we've had our milestone crop as well because there have been several projects that have been implemented that we're very proud of. The sugar cane crop season is a 24-hour operation. We only stop every two weeks for maintenance. So, we do have a shift system with the employees, where we ensure that we have good labor standards that we comply with. So, we have a shift system, but our operations, it's 24 hours, for our farmers as well. In some cases, some harvesting group leaders do harvest at night, but the majority will do their operations during the early morning before the sun is too hot, and then late afternoon."
Among the reasons to celebrate are the large quantity of cane that was milled, and the amount of sugar produced, despite the protest and the other days of milling which were lost due to bad weather.
Olivia Carballo-Avilez, Cane Farmer Relations Manager, ASR/BSI
"The crop ends tomorrow, July 29th, at 6 a.m. So, our gates will be closing at that time. The majority of the farmers have loaded their last trip, so they're in the queue. The last schedule has been issued. At this time, we have 1.155 million tonnes of cane, which is relatively good. But we do have some stand over cane, as we are aware because we had several challenges this year. We started late; we could have started on December 20th. It is when the mill was ready, and we were ready to go. We had challenges with weather issues. We had a stop for about 14 days, which really you cannot take back. Those days are gone, and so, because of the finite time of a crop season, we have to wrap things up and start our repair season."
Because of the improved quality of the cane that was delivered, BSI was able to use less to produce each tonne of sugar, which means a higher price for farmers. Also, World Market Prices are very favorable at this time. Additionally, the company has once again increased the quantity of its direct consumption, or quality food-grade sugar. Finally, BSI/ASR's improved logistics for exportation will save the industry over $2 million in freight costs. All four outcomes should lead to bigger payouts to farmers when compared to previous seasons.
Shawn Chavarria, Director of Finance, ASR/BSI
"Our loading rate in Belize City, loading in the Belize City harbor, was around 500 tonnes a day. And the results of that shipment, which was - we ended up shipping 31,000 tonnes of raw sugar. We loaded it in seven days at 5000 tonnes a day. So, you can see that massive difference in loading rate, which the savings from that will result in an improvement in the cane price. So, if you were to compare to the freight cost we would have paid if we were loading in Belize City vs Big Creek, we expect that this year, we will save around $2.5 million, and that's just on the farmers' portion, right. So, the farmers are definitely benefiting this year from that transition to Big Creek, and we've been very, very pleased with the results. This year saw an improvement in world market prices. Recently as it has dropped down with some of the macroeconomic factors that are affecting the global supply, so it's dipped a bit, it's at 17.7 cents. A few weeks ago, it was our own 19 cents per pound of sugar, compared to a few years ago when it was 12-13 cents. So that's an improvement. But in addition to that, I have highlighted the benefits of the freight savings from Big Creek. There's also benefits from the investment in the expansion of direct consumption of sugar. So, this year is a record year for us in terms of the production of value-added sugar. About 50% of the sugar we produce this year is value-added. It's more than last year, and that as well will result in an improvement in prices for cane farmers. Last year, we estimated that the benefit of selling the DC overall was around $3.67 per tonne of cane. This year we expect it to be the same. So, if you combine the Big Creek and the value-added, that's about $5 per tonne of cane more than farmers are receiving this year as a result of those savings. And if you combine that with the improvement in world market prices, then farmers are seeing improvement. The last estimate we issued was $60.24. The next estimate we will issue out is for a second payment, which occurs five weeks after the crop ends. We expect the price to be a bit better than that. And then the final one occurs around on the first Monday of November. So, so far, it's looking at least over 10% better than last year. And we expect it to be a bit more by the time the final payment is done in November."
There was, however, a significant quantity of production time that was lost for this season.
Shawn Chavarria, Director of Finance, ASR/BSI
"If you compare last year's delivery, which was 1,217,000 metric tonnes of cane, up to this morning at 6 a.m., we've received 1,155,000 tonnes of cane. We expect by tomorrow morning we'll receive probably maybe 6,000 more. So, we're about 1,161,000. That's going to be about 57,000 tonnes less. Now, when you look at the sugar production that we have derived from that cane, up to this morning, we've produced 123,983 metric tonnes compared to last year for the whole crop, when we produce 123,705. So, we're already ahead in terms of sugar production with less cane. So, that shows you the opportunity we lost in a sense from weather and the interruptions at the start that if we had received the cane during that time, we would have probably exceeded our targets this year, and farmers would have seen higher payments for their cane. More value as well because the more cane you deliver, the more payments you will receive. So, it's a lost opportunity, but at the same time, there are positives, the cane quality was better. Last year's TCTS was 9.84, this year is going to be somewhere around 9.35. So that means it took less cane to produce a tonne of sugar, which is always a good thing."
That loss of productivity is now being felt at the end of the season with an estimate of over 50,000 tonnes of stand-over cane that won't be milled, all of which will be cataloged as investment losses.
Olivia Carballo-Avilez, Cane Farmer Relations Manager, ASR/BSI
"Last year we were at around 1.21 million tonnes, so we're short around 50,000 tonnes from last year. Last year, as we are aware, only about 20,000 to 30,000 tonnes of standover cane was left, and that was mainly because it where it was poor fields. Cane cutters didn't want to cut those fields. So, the majority of the cane came in last year. At BSI, we're going to stay with cane, we have about 4,000 tonnes of cane that we're going to be left with standing cane. We are going to report it as what it is. Some farmers will have so the importance here is for them to report it so it is verified, mapped out and recorded."
Reporting for 7 News, Daniel Ortiz.
