11 US cents per pond is the world market price this morning. The cost of production in Guyana range from estates from 18 US cents to 34 US cents.

Why others produce at 11 cents and we at 18 cents with cheap labor?

"SUGAR"      www.timehritoday.blogspot.com

11 cents is the world price for bulk. Packaged sugar can give more.

Labor Cost,  too many managers, Waste and INCOMPETENCE, which will only get WORST.  Party Card Politics is the strength of the PNC!!!!!!!!!

Pavi gat de answers right dey.

So what all dem estate people have to say?  I think Gil might have some input.  Do we plant a lower grade sugar cane, for example?

It would be instructive to ask why Guyana's sugar in the mid-1800s survived because of the political lobbying powers of the planters. It took several measures to make sugar survive, one of which included keeping wages low.

VP, offhand, I don't have concrete numbers, but I can give you a general idea. In Guyana, the sucrose content of sugar cane is generally lower than the sucrose content of Cuban cane, for example. More canes are required to produce one ton of sugar in Guyana. More canes means more cane-cutters. With a vibrant trade union like GAWU, cane cutters' wages and bonuses are always increasing, which means higher labour costs. Add to that even higher managerial costs, and GuySuCo's production costs become a burden. Not to mention mostly outdated factory plant and equipment which are inefficient. All of which have left GuySuCo with a $90 billion debt.

As I'm on the subject of sugar, I recall reading in the mid-1970s a great study of the sugar industry by Dr Clive Thomas. Even then, production costs were high, ie, before nationalization.

One more thing. I don't know if the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund still exists. In the past, a percentage of sugar revenue was allocated by law to the SILWF, adding to production costs.

Only now you know they were 'WASTE AND INCOMPETENT MANAGERS'... all the time when dem use scam the people to give yuh free rum fuh suc  and chase wid poke cuttas was sweet then.... 

Why is the sucrose content low compared to Cuba?

One factor is the nature of the Guyana coastal soil. Sugar cane fields guzzle mega-tons of fertilizer, yet the cane plants can't achieve desired sucrose content.

I agree with this.

Shut your pie hole and stop messing up the thread. The PPP, the party of canecutters has been in charge for 23 years and bankrupted Guysuco, not the PNC. Leave the informed and educated on this thread to enlighten us regarding pricing and costs, ok? Go drink some white rum with Cobra.

What about drainage and irrigation costs...are those major factors?

Come shut it Shit Face AHOLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like that other fella, I could tell you to do your own research, but I like to share my knowledge. Naturally, all those costs must be factored in, but I don't have the hard data.

I notice that abbe coolies are incapable of engaging people without fish market language.

Drainage and irrigation cost was perhaps the crucial single variable that caused the African peasantry to stay at a subsistence level. Polder agriculture in that kind of tropical environment is always going to increase average cost. They need to identify crops and industry that can best thrive in a tropical polder system. The Dutch polder system is not the same.  

TK, in your research have you come across any crops that thrive in this polder system? If others know, feel free to opine. thx,

I am doing some work on it right now.

Thx, my late uncle who used to do some farming once mentioned potatoes but don't know his rationale.

Itaname,

The best proposal to replace sugar is a new hipster loved grain called quinoa. Credit to Stanley Ming. He said it many years ago. He was PNC so a brilliant idea went to waste. I think quinoa sells for like USD $28 per pound or something like that.

Shait..never heard of quinoa pronounced keen-wa,had

to look up it's an ancient grain first cultivated in Bolivia

thousands years ago.

 

12oz packet at Walmart cost about US$5.33

 

http://ancientharvest.com/anci...ains/organic-quinoa/

Look, dey can do all deh want at the fields-only so much dey can do to get the sucrose up. Once the cane is chopped, it is a hustle to get it processed. In the centuries past, dem baccras know this. Sugar is sweet as sin-dats why so much sinful practices were employed to get the sugar made fuh cheap. You all know bout slaves, indentured and how black people think that the coolies come and tek away dem wuk for cheap wages. It all gat to do with making sugar cheap.

 

In modern times, the same. Once the cane is cut, it has to get to the scales and into the knife house for chop up. Now, at that station. If the carrier are faulty-juice is being throw away, at a rapid rate.

 

Then, onto the Rollers-another area of loosing quantities juice.

 

Maintanance -very important. Weekend shut downsto achieve optimum efficiency. I do not think it happening.

 

Every sugar factory have to standards any more_Forbes had stupidtek over when Booker leff.

 

Pan-boiling is anoth area where sugar quality is compromised.

 

So many area causing low yields-Clarifiers, crytalizers and some many things.

 

An inefficient factory WILL certainly increase your production cost.

 

And that is where I suspect where the problem IS.

 

Manufacturing has the same principles no matter whatever you are manufacturing.

 

I doan think outside help will do anything for the sugar industry. The equipment are old. And have no standards. When I worked as an Assisant to the Chief Engineer, before a spare was made, I had to go back to the oroginal blueprint. Quality Control. Dey doan have dat in guyana anymoh. THat is how the floods starts-no QC.

 

Seems like you know your stuff.  What's this "If the carrier are faulty-juice is being throw away, at a rapid rate."  What is the carrier?  Carries liquid?

Cane harvesters in other countries are powered by petroleum, ours by blood. It costs a lot more.

..familiar with quinoa but not sure of its viability in Guyana. On another note I can only imagine how we'll pronounce it in creolese.

Mars, Guysuco has mechanical harvesters. Cane cutters area dying breed in Guyana. I remember when Bookers use to flood the sugar cane fields after a certain number of crops and leave the old cane roots etc. to rot for about like nine months. I am not sure if this is still true.

They have some mechanical harvesters, not enough. We should be mechanizing the entire harvesting process but I guess that it means laying off many workers which can be political suicide for whoever does it.

 

 

After the cane is weighed, it is dumped onto the carriers(steel conveyor that moves the cane to the knives(turbine driven). At that station, the cane is chopped up at high rate(mist is contained) some juice is extracted at the stage. The Intermediate Carriers takes the Chopped cane to Rolling Mill(that is where a lot of the juice is extracted. Then the secondary carriers(where the begasse is further squeezed(water is added at this stage)

 

If there are leakages, that where the profits go in a great hurry. Those stations were maintained weekly-every weekend stripped and re-assembled. 

Okay, thanks.  I did visit a sugar factory in Guyana and could vaguely remember the process. 

Skelly, that periodic controlled flooding system is called fallowing. It allows the fields to rest and recuperate so to speak. Sugar cane plants absorb the earth's nutrients quickly and hungrily. When the water is drained off the flooded fields, cane cutters get plenty hassar and patwa. At some point in the 1970s-1980s fallowing was cut down in favour of more fertilizers.

bandin as abandon when the fields were flooded.

Seignet,  so what would be your main advice to improve efficiency in sugar production?

Quin-ohhh-ahhhh

 

 

hehehe s/b pronounced Keenwah

If I was entrusted with the task of revitalizing GUYSUCO, the thing to tackle is corruption. I know for a fact the Material Control Department favors oversea purchasing involved in millions of US$. Most of it inflated prices by Guyanese to Guyanese purchasing agents with the MCD.

 

Sugar theft, even at small scale can be surmountable if enough people are doing it. Security under Bookers was a very important feature in its operations.

 

People on the payroll who doan work for it. Find them and clarify their duties. Kick backs have always been a feature in the sugar industry among foremen and field drivers.

 

After an attempt to tackle the corruption.

 

Move on to production. Simply, standardize the equipment. Refurbish. We were once very good at it-Bookers Trained Technicians. Examine every tank, pumps and any possible equipment that can spill or dump cane juice into the water ways. Alot of water is used in the production of sugar and  juices and molasses easily drains into the ducts. STOP ALL SPILLAGE.

 

Labs are important-to maximize the quality of sugar grains, the process is monitored from the onset of natural and mixed juices, the filter presses, the clarifiers, the crytalizers, the Pans and the Centrifuges.

 

Guysuco drifted into a carefree attitude. Sugar production is a science. The PNC years destroyed the morale of the industry.

 

After the production level has been made lean, then the methods of enhancing quality cane(this could be done in conjunction with factory improvements), harvesting and transportation must be tackled.

 

To revitalize GUYSUCO is ahuge undertaking-every sugar factory is lacking one way or the other. 

A certain somebody..I ain callin name but he rass should read this and see how fo explain what he "supposedly" knows, instead when asked a question he tries to belikkle the person.

Dat dam DG want a lash.

Thanks, seignet.  Hopefully, the in-depth study that they will be undertaking will find all these problems.  Corruption is a bitch man it drives up costs in any business.  What you are talking about is done big time in the medical field in terms of over invoicing purchases for drugs and equipment.