At the Investment Summit today, Sucro Limited and Santander Sugar Limited signed an MOU for the creation of Caribbean Sugar Refinery Limited. The $20 million project will establish a modern refinery within Santander's mill in Valley of Peace, with operations expected to begin in 2026. The refinery intends to supply more than 75% of refined sugar demand across CARICOM. The PM told us more about it.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I think this is an exciting step because basically with their partners, they are going to put a refinery here at the Santander plant. And why is it important? Well, it's important simply because then all of our sugar or most of our sugar, they can be refined. So we add value and then we sell it into Caricom where we get a better price. And how do our farmers benefit? Well, they will not be benefiting directly from the sale from the refined sugar, but we don't have to pay shipping to move the raw sugar to other markets, it's just going to be shipped right here within from say, Orange Walk on to, the Cayo district. So because of those less charges of transportation and so forth, I think they are telling me, the people in Santander that our farmers can be able to expect as much as $3 more per tonne."
Reporter:
"What is the government offering by way of incentives?"
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Well, the usual what we do the development concessions include the tax breaks from importation of the necessary equipment and so forth. One critical part to it is that we have to have a discussion with BEL because Santander has signed an agreement with BEL to provide electricity. And if they do not meet the amount of electricity that they have to provide, they can be penalized. With this new project, they are going to use a portion, a small portion, not the full, but some of the energy that's being sold to the grid to be able to power this refinery. And so that said that we have to talk to BEL to see if they can remove that clause to penalize them because this project is very important for us as a country."
