And while talk of the controlled price for sugar sparks contention on all sides, there's also the business of the performance of the sugar mill.
Today, two months into the sugar season, the cane farmer relations manager, Olivia Avilez, provided an update on this season's sugar crop.
She explained that while they have processed more tons of cane, they're having issues with the quality of the cane.
Olivia Avilez, Cane Farmers Relations Manager
"We are actually on the 63rd day, mill report for day 62 yesterday, we are at 350,834 tons of cane and this is really over 57,000 tons of cane more than last year given that we have also started a crop a little bit earlier. We have done 32,561 tons of sugar, which is also good at this time, however, we do have some issues with cane quality. Our pol actually, we are at around 12.9 pol when last year we were at 11.46. TC/TS of 10.80. we were at 9.97 last year and that's some of the quality parameters. One of the challenges we do have with the crop is that it's a bit younger than last year given that we started a bit earlier and we do have some standover that we are dealing with at this time, farmers had a challenge at the forefront of this crop to be able to get to those standover due to wet conditions and also the bad state of the sugar roads so they were unable to get to those. They're just starting to get to those, at this time now that it's dry, and getting through that cane is lower quality, of course, we had, this is after the blockade that we started a later crop so the crop this year, we're trying to put it back into cycle, remember we should be starting a crop from December to around June and that's more or less the biological maturity of the sugar cane. So those are some of the parameters on sugarcane at this time and the crop. We're milling fairly well, our effective grinding rate is going well at this time. During the maintenance portions of the crop or times of maintenance, we do have work to do with the boilers, there's some wear and tear issues with the tubes and so we do have to address those during our maintenance."
