Is Refined White Sugar the Next Step for A.S.R./B.S.I.?

With a more reliable system established at the Big Creek Port, will A.S.R./B.S.I. now look to creating refined white sugar? Country Manager Mac McLachlan was asked what’s next for the sugar industry.

Mac McLachlan

Mac McLachlan, Country Manager, A.S.R. Group-Belize Sugar

“We set out way back in 2014 a serious of steps we felt were necessary to take this industry forward. We call it a white paper, but it had a lot of ideas and suggestions of cooperation largely with all the main sugar stakeholders. And I think we have been fairly consistent with our part of that program. And that’s led to the major investments we’ve made in direct consumption sugars and also the environmental investments we’ve made at Tower Hill and now we’ve unlocked a major bottleneck which is the logistics bottleneck. Over the last ten years or so we are really putting our money and investment where our words are. And trying to build this industry, along with the other sugar mill in Belize, to ensure Belize really is the sugar industry of choice in the CARICOM and also selling very good quality sugar into the E.U.”

Reporter

“Sir we understand that there may be a plan for a refinery in the future. Where are we on that?”

Mac McLachlan

“Well that would be some way down the track and there’s no firm plan for that. Ideally in the future what we would like the see is further investment to debottleneck the factory to make the cost of producing sugar lower and therefore more competitive. And in time, certainly, we would like to see a future where we could fully service the CARICOM market with all the different types of sugar that are required there. Obviously we need a lot of certainty to be able to do those types of things and you know, we are not quite there at the moment.”

The company has made a sixty million-dollar investment to direct consumption food grade sugars, which are high value sugars, to sell to CARICOM, the E.U. and many other markets.