Multimillion-dollar upgrade of Long Pond to begin in March

CLARK'S TOWN , Trelawny — A director of the Everglades Farms Limited, which operators the Long Pond and Hampden Estates in Trelawny, on Monday unveiled plans by the company to modernise the Long Pond sugar factory in the parish at a cost of roughly US$6 million.

We will be spending somewhere between US$4 to US$6 million to modernise the factory to make it more efficient," Percy Hussey told reporters during a press conference at the Long Pond Club House in Trelawny.

Another US$2 million, he added, will be expended in the planting of cane, as well as the purchasing of much-needed farm equipment for the estate.

Everglades hopes to complete the replanting of roughly 2,000 acres of the crop within the next few months.

The Long Pond sugar factory was in July 2009 sold to Everglades Farms Limited, which also leased the vast cane lands in the vicinity of the plant for 50 years, as well as the cane lands in the Hampden area under the Government's sugar divestment programme.

But five months ago, Everglades announced that it would be closing the sugar processing plant for one year to facilitate a multimillion-dollar repair job at the facility.

Following the announcement, cane farmers in Trelawny and St James who had been delivering their canes to the factory for decades, raised concerns about the viability of transporting their canes to the Frome sugar factory -- a distance of more than 70 miles -- for processing.

But Monday, Hussey said that Frome Estate had agreed to absorb the additional transportation costs, emphasising that the closure of the facility was aimed at achieving greater efficiencies.

Production at the inefficient Long Pond sugar factory has been steadily declining in recent years.

Last year, the factory performed dismally, producing a mere 1,400 tonnes of sugar, which industry officials described as the worst in the history of the plant.

But Hussey remained optimistic Monday that the plant would be able to manufacture 25,000 tonnes of the sweetener when the modernisation is complete.

According James Dawkins, the operations manager at Everglades Farms, the rehabilitation programme will include the upgrading of boilers, power house, installation of new mill rollers, new filters, as well as the installation of new condensers and evaporators.

"Over the years we have used too much bunker sea oil, so we are looking at upgrading the process to use less bunker sea oil or eventually no bunker sea oil at all," he explained.

Meanwhile, Dawkins said Everglades Farms and care farmers in the Trelawny and St James areas are expected to deliver just under 100,000 tonnes of cane to the Frome factory during the 2010/2011 crop, which got under way last Thursday.

source: jamaicaobserver