B.S.I. Prepares for Upcoming Sugar Crop

Shawn Chavarria

A new sugar crop is set to begin in the weeks ahead and Belize Sugar Industries, much like the cane farmers across the north, is preparing for the upcoming season.  On Wednesday, B.S.I.’s financial director, Shawn Chavarria, provided an update on how that process is coming along, as well as what can be expected from the 2022/2023 sugar crop.

Shawn Chavarria, Financial Director, B.S.I.

“From our end, BSI has been working on its maintenance program.  This year, we‘ve invested close to fourteen million Belize dollars in getting the factory and the power plant ready for the upcoming crop.  We‘ve done a thorough maintenance and we‘re now approaching the last leg of our maintenance plan.  We had targeted to start around the middle of December, that still remains our target.  We should be meeting associations, I believe in the next week, to start talking about preparations, their readiness as well for the start of crop, how the fields are looking, what are the road conditions.  These are usually the topics that we discuss as we anticipate and then agree on a start date for the crop.  From our end, preparations are well underway where our maintenance schedule has been going good and according plan.  We’ve put a robust maintenance plan for next year to ensure that the mill is ready to start receiving cane, to ensure that we have a very good performance next year and that we can receive all the cane available.  I think that is it in summary, from our standpoint, where we are in terms of our preparation.”

Reporter

“Do you conduct a field assessment to determine how much cane we have that’s ready to be milled?”

Shawn Chavarria

“We do conduct our own internal assessments.  BSI has about ten percent of the cane, so we have a general idea of what the conditions are but certainly we depend a lot on the industry bodies for that analysis.”