Only 55% of this year's cane crop has been crushed so far, with two-thirds of the crushing season gone.
Now that the wet weather is fast approaching, it is anticipated that there will be a large volume of standover cane when the mills are forced to close in December.
It would certainly be totally irresponsible to attempt to keep crushing beyond 15 December because of the enormous harvesting and transportation problems that farmers will face. Also of significance is that the sugar content in the cane will be at a minimal beyond December.
It is well known that cane cutters from the villages will not stay beyond 15 December when they leave to go home for the festive season ( Christmas and New Year).
There is some talk that FSC is contemplating running the Lautoka and Rarawai Mills into the New Year and possibly up to February should there be sufficient quantities of cane left to be harvested.
Individual mill figures indicate that Labasa may be able to crush its crop by late December. It has so far crushed around 70% of the estimated crop of 670,000 tonnes. Even then, it is highly likely that some 20,000 tonnes will be left standing when the mill closes.
Lautoka with a season to date crush figure of 388,000 tonnes still has 45% of its estimated crop of 700,000 tonnes unharvested. The mill is already 7 seeks behind schedule as of now. At its present performance level which is not likely to improve, the mill will take at least 11 more weeks to crush the remaining crop of around 300,000 tonnes which takes it to almost the end of December.
As for Rarawai, 57% of its estimated crop (350,000 tonnes) of around 650,000 tonnes remains to be crushed. It is to be noted that some 40,000 tonnes of Ba cane has been crushed by the Penang Mill. Based on the poor performance of the Rarawai Mill, it will take 14 weeks to complete the crush. This means the mill will need to run until the middle of January.
The Penang Mill is scheduled to close at the end of the week, having crushed 215,000 tonnes of cane of which 40,000 came from the Ba mill area.
It is now quite certain that FSC will fall far short of its target of 240,000 tonnes of sugar for this season. Total sugar revenue is likely to be down by some $80 million for the 2009 season.
