Cane Supply Up, Labasa Crush delay
Atotal of 311,476 tonnes of cane has been crushed since the crushing started on June 1.
This was confirmed by the Fiji Sugar Corporation’s chief executive officer, Graham Clark, yesterday.
As a result, 29,750 tonnes of sugarcane has been produced to date with an average of 10:1 TCTS (tonne of cane per tonne of sugar).
Mr Clark said cane supply was gradually increasing as gangs have started harvesting. In regards to the discovery of the diffuser scraper in the Lautoka mill, Mr Clark said investigation was on-going.
Minor breakdowns were experienced in the three sugar mills that are operating but these were repaired quickly.
Mr Clark said the supply from Rakiraki is slowly increasing after a slow start.
“Some trucks from Rarawai Sugar Mill will be diverted to the Lautoka Mill this week to accelerate delivery of Rakiraki cane,” he said.
Labasa Crush Delay
A fault in a shredder shaft at the Fiji Sugar Corporation Labasa Mill has momentarily slowed down the crushing pace in the North.
The FSC Chief Operations officer Navin Chandra said this did not mean that the crushing stopped but rather delayed the process. “That is why crushing has been slow for the past few days but we are looking into rectifying the problem,” Mr Chandra said. He said an engineer was sent yesterday to analyse the problem and to decide what was to be done to solve it.
Mr Chandra added that he had met with the General Mill Manager Karia Christopher in Lautoka for them to address the welfare of the lorry drivers.
“This has impacted the performance of the crushing process and we are attending to it, we are just requesting cooperation from the lorry drivers.
A Seaqaqa farmer Abdul Aiyaz said that he had to wait from 9am to 10pm on Monday before he could return home.
“This has affected us and we are requesting that FSC looks into this problem as soon as possible.”