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Molasses
export earns $30m
KARACHI, March 19: Around 600,000
tons of molasses export during current sugarcane crushing
season has fetched around $30 million at an average price of
$50 per ton, exporters said.
The country is expected to produce around 1.5 million tons
molasses during current sugarcane crushing season, which would
earn around $75 million. The bulk of molasses quantity is
exported to European countries where it is processed and
up-graded to make it usable for industrial purposes, including
alcohol and in some edible products.
Due to poor harvest of sugarcane crop the country for the last
two consecutive years has produced around 1.5 million tons as
against 2 to 2.2 million tons it used to produce.
The sugar mills generally do not have proper storage system of
molasses and normally they fill open pits in the ground which
are exposed to atmospheric changes as well as dirt.
Consequently, most of the leading exporters have already
purchased huge quantity of molasses, which is reported to be
in the range of 400,000 to 500,000 tons and have stored it in
tanks at Keamari.
With crushing season almost over in the province of Sindh the
flow of molasses is reported to have declined considerably.
However, in Punjab where crop size is 20 to 25 per cent larger
than Sindh and crushing season also starts late most of sugar
mills are still operating.
Exporters expect that around 0.5 million tons of molasses was
still lying with sugar mills in Punjab and Sindh but with
weekly export of around 50,000 tons they expect to handle the
entire exportable quantity within next three to four months.
According to sugar technologists the absence of downstream
industries in sugar sector is one of the main factors of its
being inefficient and cost ineffective. In countries like
Brazil the sugar industry is involved in production of other
industrial as well as edible products which they make out of
molasses, but in Pakistan it is being exported at a throw away
prices.
These experts suggest that the government should make it
mandatory for each sugar unit to set up downstream industries
which will not only make sugar production cheaper but will
also serve the policy of value addition.
Nowhere in the world the crushing of sugarcane is taken as an
industrial activity, it is rather the high-tech activity of
the downstream industry which has attained importance, they
added.
Courtesy Dawn March
22, 2002
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Pakissan.com;
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