GuySuCo: Spending more to produce less sugar

Introduction

Recently, while examining the archival material in my possession on GuySuCo, I came across three documents which I believe readers would find instructive at this stage of my consideration of the sugar industry. One of these is an earlier column I wrote about a year ago (September 18, 2011). There I found mention of a GuySuCo target set for achievement in an earlier year that now turns out to be identical to the one I cited a couple of weeks ago, which is now being  set for achievement in 2013! The target was to mechanize 40 per cent of cultivated sugar cane by 2011, with the remaining percentage semi-mechanized by 2014.

That column had also mentioned that not only was the Skeldon Sugar Modernization Project (SSMP) targeted at 435,000 tonnes of sugar annually, but in addition 1) Skeldon’s new factory would be accompanied by the remodelling of the Albion factory to process 415 tonnes cane per hour (tch); 2) Rose Hall estate would be closed; and 3) all other factories