Amidst “great joy and excitement” the first batch of sugar was produced at the new Skeldon Sugar Factory on Saturday.
The high-priced new factory has experienced a series of commissioning problems which prevented it from operating at the start of the all-important second crop. The old Skeldon factory – with much lower capacity – is currently grinding cane.
A press release yesterday from the China National Technology Import and Export Corp. (CNTIC), the company which built the factory, said that at approximately midday on Saturday, the ‘A’ sugar centrifugal was started and after spinning for two and a half minutes, the first batch of 400kg of sugar was produced.
“This has brought great joy and excitement to everyone who was present to witness this historical moment.
To produce sugar and send the sugar all the way to the sugar bins means that the Tests on Completion (TOC) for the Skeldon II sugar factory has finished the final cycle of test and the new factory is ready for trial production, to the followed by commercial operation”, the release stated.
CNTIC said that during Saturday’s test about 50 cubic metres of ‘A’ massecuite was processed and about 30 tons of sugar was produced. This latest round of TOC commenced lat Monday and almost all the sugar processing equipment and power generating plants have been repeatedly tested.
The company said that during the six days period, the boiler was mainly fired on bagasse and the power generated by the turbine was not only consumed in the factory but also exported to the Guyana Power and Light national grid. This implies that co-generation capacity of the new sugar factory has already been put into operation, it stated.
Meanwhile, the release said, the sugar processing equipment have been tested in the sequence of Cane Preparation, Juice extraction, Clarification and Evaporation, Pan boiling and crystallization and VHP sugar handling.
The Chinese contractors were hoping that the turnkey project could be handed over to the Guyana Sugar Corporation by the end of October – one in a string of missed deadlines.
They also hope that once the factory is up and running efficiently both parties could amicably resolve issues of liquidated damages, which could run into millions of US dollars, for failure to hand over the project by the deadline.
In a telephone interview towards the end of October, CNTIC Director Chen Yu Yu, who is currently overseeing the commissioning of the US$181 million plant, told Stabroek News that since the commissioning process restarted on October 8, the engineers have found a number of hiccups on the production line and were fixing them one by one.
Chen said that CNTIC has already received a notice for liquidated damages from Guysuco but he hopes that once the testing is successfully completed both companies could work towards an amicable resolution of the matter.
The old factory can only process 92 tonnes of cane per hour while the new factory has the capacity to process 350 tonnes per hour.
Work began on the factory in 2005 and it was expected that the project would have been completed by October last year.
Since then the commissioning date has been pushed back several times with the last date being August 26, 2008.
