Labasa Mill

from w
Noticed a story about Labasa Mill which shows the difficulties of the sugar industry in Fiji.

Labasa Mill closes with dismal performance
Crushing at the Labasa Mill ends tonight with this season’s crush of around 570,000 tonnes of cane.

FSC estimates a standover crop of 40,000 tonnes which brings the crop total to 610,000 tonnes compared to pre-crush estimates of 654,000 tonnes, a shortfall of 44,000 tonnes.

The mill made about 44,000 tonnes of sugar returning a high TCTS of 13:1 (13 tonnes of cane to make a tonne of sugar) due to frequent breakdowns. Milling inefficiencies resulted in an estimated loss of 13,000 tonnes of sugar calculated at a TCTS ratio of 10:1.

In monetary terms, this loss equates to $13 million of which the growers will bear $9 million or $15.78 per tonne of cane.

The loss is huge. Somewhat similar results are expected from the other three mills which have also been plagued by milling problems. Bad news for the industry and its future sustainability.

S. Lal

Falling in the water

The Labasa journalists are writing some pretty weird stories this week - first a woman falls into the sea from the ferry near Savusavu and now the sugar train drops bundles of cane into the Labasa River to sweeten it up!

Rail carts drop into river with cane
Wednesday, June 17, 2009FSC workers help put up the rail cart that fell into the Labasa river on Monday afternoon.

A LOCOMOTIVE operator escaped injury after the rail carts he was towing went off the track on a bridge and plunged into the Labasa River on Monday night.

Yesterday morning, a group of Fiji Sugar Corporation workers and cane farm labourers were on the bridge putting the carts back together and collecting scattered cane.

A cart carries about three and a half tonnes of cane, at the value of $61 a tonne.

Samisoni Tunatui was drinking grog at a taxi stand in the Labasa market when he saw the three carts go off track before one fell into the river. The second cart hung on under the bridge while the third remained on the bridge but it was derailed.

Mr Tunatui said he and some friends ran to the bridge and when they got there, they saw the locomotive had stopped at one end of the bridge, on the mill side and the three carts had fallen off at the opposite end of the bridge, toward the Grand Eastern Hotel.

He said cane from the three carts fell into the river.

The Fiji Sugar Corporation said crushing at the Labasa Mill started last week.