Lautoka Mill ends annual cane crushing season

General manager said no further extensions would be granted despite the bad weather conditions

The Lautoka Sugar Mill ended its crushing season yesterday and would not extend this period because of the adverse weather conditions. Mill general manger Viliame Savou said that an extension was already given to farmers till yesterday to deliver their cane for crushing. “The ruling by the Tribunal was to stop crushing on the 14th”, Mr Savou said. “After having discussions with stakeholders we have extended to Friday (yesterday).” Mr Savou said no further extensions would be granted despite the bad weather conditions being experienced in the cane belt areas. “The weather is not conducive, even if we wait now, when do we start again?” he asked. Mr Savou said a lack of effort had been shown by the farmers. “There has been just really poor effort,” Mr Savou said. “There has been weeks that we were only crushing 18,000-20,000 tonnes of cane where as this mill can crush close to 30,000 tonnes of cane per week. “We cannot forever be prolonging.”

The chief executive officer of the Sugar Cane Growers Council Sunderesh Chetty told Fiji Sun that due to low cane supply and bad weather conditions the Lautoka Sugar Mill ended its crushing last night. Mr Savou said that the mill was hardly producing any sugar and therefore, an extension was not an option.

He said that a stock pile was collected and was crushed yesterday. “We have stock piled 800 tonnes of cane which will be crushed. That’s close to 70 lorries, something we never used to do,” he said. “The maximum we used to stock pile was 20 lorries but to assist the farmers we have done this.”

He said the total figures for the 2016 crushing season would be released next week. Edited by Rusiate Mataika