Sugar mills set output targets

Sugar mills in the country will produce between 900,000 and a million tonnes of sugar in the 2010-11 season, according to the Viet Nam Sugar and Sugarcane Association.

This marks an increase of 10-15 per cent over the last season, the association said.

Trinh Minh Chau, deputy chairman of the association, said eight of 10 sugar mills in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta had begun production and the remaining two would begin production soon.

Mills in the southeastern and central regions would begin production in November and December, Chau said.

For the 2010-11 sugarcane season, the Cuu Long Delta has planted 49,000ha of sugarcane that are expected to yield 3.2 million tonnes, 400,000 tonnes short of the quantity that mills in the region plan to process in the next season.

To avoid unhealthy competition in purchasing sugarcane for the upcoming season, the mills have agreed to refrain from buying young sugarcane that is not ready for harvest.

However, Chau said that some of the mills had not kept their commitment and had bought unripe sugarcane from areas where sugarcane fields were allotted to them.

Vo Van Son, deputy general director of the Can Tho Sugar Joint Stock Company, said An Giang Province’s Phung Hiep District was now harvesting about 8,000 tonnes of sugarcane a day, but half of this was bought by mills from other provinces.

Nguyen The Tu, deputy head of Phung Hiep District’s Agriculture and Rural Development Office, said since August, traders in An Giang and other provinces had paid money in advance to farmers.

Farmers in the district, An Giang Province’s largest sugarcane cultivation area, have had a good harvest with an average output of 100-110 tonnes per ha.

Tu said that at the current purchase price of VND1,000 a kilo, farmers could earn a profit of VND50-90 million (US$2,600-4,700) from a ha of sugarcane. — VNS

Tags: Vietnam sugar, Vietnam sugar output 2010