BAMC and unions agree on way forward for sugar harvest

After a one-week unexpected shutdown of this year’s sugar crop, the island’s sole sugar factory at Portvale, St James is scheduled to start grinding canes again on Saturday.

The state-owned Barbados Agricultural Management Company (BAMC) which manages the sector made the announcement on Monday afternoon, attributing the temporary halt in harvesting and milling, three weeks into a 13-week crop, to mechanical problems at Portvale a week ago.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the BAMC Orlando Atherley disclosed that his agency and the three unions involved have already reached agreement in principle on a proposed plan surrounding how the harvest will now move forward in the circumstances.

“We are planning to restart the milling of cane on Saturday and we are working with our stakeholders – the Barbados Sugar Industry Limited, Barbados Workers’ Union and SISA, the Sugar Industry Staff Association. We met with them, we put a plan in place. They are supposed to come back to us to confirm that the plan that we agreed in principle is acceptable to everybody,” Atherley told Barbados TODAY.

“Once that happens, we will receive cane from the industry on Sunday/Monday, and we will work to try to get back into the normal cycle. We have cane on the ground. It has been on the ground for seven days. We have already taken a decision that we would not take sugar from that cane, but we will in turn, engage the rum industry in purchasing that syrup [extracted from the cane] to be used in rum production,” he stated.

Explaining what led to the shutdown, the CEO said that last week, Portvale experienced some issues on its number two boiler on the fireside, which is the side where the fire comes up to heat the cane juice before it becomes crystals.

He noted that work was scheduled to be done on that boiler once the crop was completed.

“It was some work we had planned to do because when we started the crop, we had some intrusion. We were still seeing the intrusion of the ashfall which is the sulphur from last year.  That caused some damage to some of the tubes that we had intended to replace after we finished the crop. This necessitated us having to shutdown unplanned. We took the decision to shut down and to replace the safety tubes that we found that needed to be replaced,” the BAMC chief said.

Atherley pointed out that technicians worked around-the-clock to get it done and were today

finishing the installation work.

He said that over the next few days, workers will close the boiler and start to reheat the system in order to “bring up fire” in the boiler in accordance with health and safety standards.”

“Where we are as compared to last year…we started a week late. Last year we started the crop on March 5. This year we started on the 15th because of the issue [pay]. Three weeks into the crop last year, we had reached 16,000 tonnes of cane, and this year we reached 21,000 tonnes. Our molasses production was almost 400 tonnes more than we were last year, as well as our sugar was slightly up,” the BAMC top executive explained.

“We do anticipate getting back on track, because we are proposing to work extra days to harvesting cane and therefore we are looking to complete within the specified time of 13 to 14 weeks of this year as opposed to 17 last year…bearing in mind we had a couple of unplanned stops last year…the ashfall, the hurricane. We do anticipate we will finish before, based on the trajectory of the canes flowing.

“We are now in week three and once we start, we are hoping to finish within another 10 weeks,” Atherley stated.

The BAMC spokesman expects this year’s crop would yield the 100,000 tonnes of cane that have been targeted.

That, he said, translates into 6,800 tonnes of sugar and about 7,000 tonas of molasses.

Last year, 5,300 tonnes of sugar was produced from 90,000 tonnes of cane.

“Remember we no longer produce bulk sugar [for export]. So we don’t produce all the sugar that we can. Right now we are satisfying 100 per cent of the domestic market. So it wouldn’t make sense we going and producing sugar we can’t sell,” Atherley declared.

Meanwhile, President of the Sugar Industry Staff Association (SISA) Dwight Miller disclosed that his membership had given the go ahead to work over the holidays in order to make up for lost harvesting time.

“I talked with my membership and they basically agreed to work through a part of the Easter weekend where we will revert to cut canes and work through Easter. Easter is a period that is normally shutdown and this is normally a mid-point of the harvest or there about,” Miller told Barbados TODAY.

“But obviously, because of the mechanical troubles that we had and canes being out there, it makes sense for the employees to work with management in trying to get things up and running to get the harvest going on. The longer the canes stay out, it affects both of us,” he contended.

He added: “We need to work together on this occasion to try and bring out the best for the industry.”

Chairman of the Barbados Sugar Industry Limited (BSIL) Mark Sealy said his cane farmers have no other option in the circumstances but to go the extra mile during the Easter holiday to ensure that the canes are not left in the field any longer as a result of the plan proposed by the BAMC.

“We put it to our farmers. Our farmers really don’t have a choice. We need to get the canes out of the field. The plan is to work…I believe they are going to be starting grinding on Saturday and taking canes from the BSIL farmers Sunday and Monday. So we really don’t have a choice. We have to work on those days if we are going to get our canes out of the field. We have to get cracking on this crop and making sugar,” Sealy told Barbados TODAY this evening.

However, the BWU has not made a final decision on the proposed Easter work.

Deputy General Secretary Dwaine Paul said the union was finalising its position and would be better able to declare its hands tomorrow.

“We are looking at it in terms of working over the Easter weekend and exactly what days we will work that weekend and the terms. The position is about finalised and probably by tomorrow we would have the appropriate documentation that we requested and that would put us in a position to move ahead with the idea,” Paul said late this evening.

However, the union official hinted to some form of resistance if documentation is not forthcoming.

“Yes there is a plan being developed to have some coverage over the Easter weekend to deal with some of the backlog that has taken place due to challenges at the factory. But our final position is that if we don’t get the written paperwork, you know what is going to happen,” Paul cautioned.
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb