A.S.R./B.S.I. Wouldn’t Want to Seek Legal Action over Milling of Sugar
While there is legislation that allows for A.S.R./B.S.I. to mill no less than one point five million tons of sugarcane per crop season, the miller said it would not want the issue to be resolved in the courts.
Mac McLachlan, VP, International Relations, A.S.R./B.S.I.
“That would be a very sad affair if it had to come to that. I think that we’re anticipating a further discussion with the government on this. We had anticipated that certain action would take place in advance of that such as verification that could give us all a little bit more certainty on what numbers are being used and why and, you know, of course we will always reserve our rights. But what we are hoping is that basically nobody’s disadvantaged in this and there will be no real reason for anyone to go to court. We have commercial agreements with each of the cane farmer associations to receive all their sugar cane and the last thing we want is for cane farmers to be undermined in any way, that’s not what we want. We have a responsibility to our farmers and our intention as always is to make sure that we don’t leave them economically vulnerable and that would, I think will most certainly happen if they start to take their cane to Santander because it costs so much money to get it there.”
News Five will have a response from the Minister of Agriculture in Friday’s newscast.