B.S.I. Is “Content and Happy” at the Start of the 2022/2023 Crop Season

The 2022/2023 sugar crop officially began this morning, following long-drawn-out negotiations between the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association and B.S.I. As we reported on Friday, the B.S.C.F.A. and the miller signed a one-year interim agreement under the same conditions as last year’s crop. This was a watershed for the entire industry, as the Sugar Industry Control Board made the signing a prerequisite for the start of the crop. Three other producer associations that had already signed agreements with B.S.I. were becoming increasingly frustrated because under the conditions set out by the S.I.C.B., they were unable to deliver their sugarcane. But, as we said, an agreement was reached and today we spoke via ZOOM with Olivia Avilez, the Cane Farmers Relations Manager at A.S.R./B.S.I. about the mill’s readiness.

Olivia Avilez

Olivia Avilez, Cane Farmers Relations Manager, A.S.R./B.S.I.

“We are definitely content and happy that we are starting the crop season. Of course we would have wanted to start earlier. We were ready since December nineteenth. We did have a very extensive repair season and usually during this repair season, the entire mill is taken down, maintained, refurbished and set back up. So, we are going to be testing this week the factory itself as we do every year during the start of the season. It is important we run cane through it so that we know exactly where tweaking needs to happen. Therefore, it is important for us to make a start; because it is a machine we don’t know exactly when it will break down or when we will have issues. But, we want to make sure that we are responding to these. We also had the implementation of the second phase of the air emission project, which is boiler number two and we did a lot of work there. We are ready, we are prepared and definitely contented that we are able to start. We have long term commercial agreement with three other associations who wanted to make a start as well, so we are very happy to do that today.”