URC puts up new sugar plant

Gokongwei-owned Universal Robina Corp.’s (URC) sugar and renewables subsidiary Sonedco has put up a new sugar mill in Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental to meet the growing demand in the province.

The new mill increases Sonedco’s total milling capacity to 14,000 tons of canes per day and expands URC’s total capacity to 40,000 tons of canes per day. It can crush up to 6,000 metric tons of canes per day,

The expansion project began in April 2017.

Full commercial operations are set to start this year until the 2020 crop year, said Renato Cabati, vice president and business unit general manager of URC’s sugar and renewables group.

“The inauguration of the new mill marks the high point of our 30 years in the sugar business. It fulfills our commitment to serve sugar cane farmers with a mill that renders better sugar recovery from their canes and utilizes lower energy cost, so that the consumers will be provided with good-quality sugar at fair and reasonable prices,” Cabati said.

Cabati said URC decided to expand Sonedco’s capacity to cover the growing volume of sugar canes that need to be milled in Negros Occidental.

Sonedco produces refined sugar used by URC’s branded consumer foods division for its Great Taste coffee, C2, biscuits, candies and other sweetened products. It also supplies bottler’s grade refined sugar to other beverage companies.

The new mill was designed and supplied by Sutech Engineering of Thailand while the latest technology in electric motors that drive the mill was supplied by Japan’s Sumitomo Drive Technologies.

URC operates a total of six sugar mills and refineries across the country with a combined output of 40,000 tons of sugar cane and 32,000 bags of refined sugar per day.

Sonedco also has a biomass-fired cogeneration plant with a capacity of 46 megawatts exporting power to the national grid using bagasse, a byproduct of sugar milling as fuel. URC acquired Sonedco in 1988.

At present, URC is the country’s top producer of raw sugar with a total output of 417,000 metric tons, accounting for 17 percent of the total domestic production.

URC is the third-largest supplier of refined sugar, with actual production of 2.9 million bags.