Everest Sugar Mills of Ramnagar completes cane crushing

By Our Correspondent,Bardibas, Mar. 16: Everest Sugar Mills at Ramnagar has completed the sugarcane crushing of this year.

The factory has officially informed that the cane crushing of this season has been completed from Thursday morning.

 Although the mill operated for 89 days, there was 'no cane' for seven days, so the actual crushing was done only 82 days, according to the factory.

Due to farmers' agitation regarding the price of sugarcane, the mill operated 11 days later than the scheduled time from December 20, 2023.

During the period, around 2.9 million quintals of sugarcane was crushed, said the General Manager of the Factory, Surendra Shukla.

This is about 600,000 quintals less than the target for this year. The factory had a target to crush around 3.5 million quintals of sugarcane this year.

The 'recovery' rate of sugar this time is 9 per cent, however, the actual amount of sugar produced will be confirmed only after five days, said the factory.

After the farmers started protesting near the crushing season, the big mills, including Everest Mills, could not be operated at the scheduled time.

Using this as an opportunity, the small sugar mills of the Sarlahi and Bara districts continued crushing during the agitation.

Due to the agitation, there was confusion regarding the operation of the big mills. Farmers were hurrying to sell their products to small mills, so there was a natural decrease in sugarcane supply for large mills.

“There was a shortage of sugarcane for the industries. The industries faced a ‘no cane’ situation time and again. Due to these reasons, the Everest Sugar Mills could not crush sugarcane as per the target,” said Shukla.

As Everest started paying for sugarcane within five days, the farmers' confidence towards the factory increased. However, sugarcane farmers were disappointed over the fact that they would not be able to recover the actual price based on the production cost, he said.

Naresh Singh Kushawha, President of the Mahottari Sugarcane Producers’ Association, said that there was no sign of an immediate solution to the sugarcane shortage as this depression will have an impact on sugarcane cultivation for the next year as well.

The government fixed the price of sugarcane at Rs. 635 per quintal, including a government subsidy of Rs. 70 per quintal.