Factory setbacks, market woes could delay sugar crop

The 2026 sugar crop is facing fresh uncertainty amid conflicting signals from industry leaders and mounting evidence that the island’s only operational factory is not yet ready to receive canes, Barbados TODAY can reveal.

There is no indication at present that the sugar harvest will begin this month, as private farmers have urged, further plunging the country’s oldest industry into further doubt.

Indar Weir, former agriculture minister ahead of next Wednesday’s general election, pledged to address the situation, but the Sugar Industry Staff Association (SISA), which represents mill workers, and an industry source said on Wednesday that Portvale Factory, the island’s lone mill, will not be operational this month.

Portvale’s General Manager, Marlon Munroe, declined to say when the factory would be ready. He told Barbados TODAY: “I can’t comment. You called me on a matter that I can’t comment on. I don’t know where that is coming from. I can’t comment, I can’t comment.”

Substantial maintenance and preparatory work still needed to be completed, making a February start highly unlikely, said SISA President Dwight Millar.

“There seems to be a lot of work going on at the factory,” Millar said. “Based on what’s happening there, we don’t see how we could start by the middle of February. So that’s now looking more like a March start — the first or second week — depending on how quickly they get things back in place.”

Extensive repairs were still underway to bring equipment up to standard.

“The fellows are working on the mill and certain other systems to get things sorted. From my information, I don’t see how it could start in mid-February based on what they still have to complete,” he said. “They are also waiting on the purchasing numbers, which are supposed to be finalised annually.”

Millar also pointed to the pending brix report — an annual measure of the sugar content in the standing cane — as another factor delaying the start of the harvest. The results, he said, would determine the optimal time to begin reaping.

“I saw people last week taking samples of the cane for brix testing at the research centre,” he explained. “They compile a report showing sucrose levels and other indicators of ripening. Those results usually determine the best time to start. From what I understand, they’re still waiting on that report. The factory doesn’t seem ready — not for this month, anyhow.”

Millar noted that over the past two years, the crop had typically started in early March.

“My people are on the job, doing their best with what they have to get things ready as soon as possible. I’d say March looks realistic,” he said.

A source with detailed knowledge of the industry said another issue could also slow the start of the new season — the unsold sugar remaining from the 2025 crop. The source claimed that the surplus had been difficult to move because of sugar imports from Jamaica.

Millar confirmed that stock from last year’s harvest was still in storage but declined to elaborate.

In mid-January, cane growers had warned that the sugar industry could collapse within months if cheap brown sugar imports from outside the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) were not halted. They said imported sugar was flooding the domestic market, undermining domestic production, and threatening jobs and rural livelihoods.

At the time, Mark Sealy, the chairman of the Barbados Sugar Industry Limited (BSIL), the private planters grouping, told Barbados TODAY that the inflow of cheaper foreign sugar was putting them at risk.

“We are very concerned about licences allowing the importation of brown sugar into Barbados from outside the region,” Sealy said. “We understand there is brown sugar coming from outside CARICOM, competing directly with local Barbados sugar on the domestic market. That’s basically shooting yourself in the foot — it needs to stop.”

Asked on Wednesday about the readiness for the 2026 crop, Sealy said that while the preferred start date remained mid-February, no definite schedule had been confirmed. However, he assured that his farmers would be ready to deliver canes once the factory announced its start-up.

Co-op Energy Chair Lieutenant Colonel Trevor Browne, whose company assumed oversight of the sugar industry in January 2024 following the government’s divestment of the Barbados Agricultural Management Company (BAMC), also said he was unsure when the crop would begin and referred queries to Weir.

Co-op Energy established two subsidiaries — Barbados Energy and Sugar Company (BESCO) Ltd, which manages the factory, and Agricultural Business Company (ABC) Ltd, which oversees roughly 4 500 acres of farmland.