Reaping of Cane at Frome Underway

The reaping of cane at the Frome Sugar Estate in Westmoreland started yesterday (Jan. 7), with the burning of some cane fields.
Vice President for Operations at Frome, Aston Smith, told JIS News that cutting of the burnt fields and delivery of the cane to the factory should begin today (Jan. 8), with the factory mill expected to be in operation to crush the reaped cane by late Thursday night into Friday morning.
“We have about 610,000 tons of cane at Frome and we expect to make 47,800 tons of sugar from that,” he informed.
Mr. Smith explained that Frome has two sets of mills or tandems, and one tandem will be brought into operation immediately, while the other should be in operation by the end of the month.
“We are starting with one tandem now and then, within two to three weeks, the second tandem will be up and running, so by the end of January we will be up and running to a capacity of about 5,000 to 6,000 tons of cane per-day going through the factory,” he informed.
Despite the start of the redundancy exercise in anticipation of the divestment of the state-owned sugar factories, Mr. Smith said that there is no shortage of labour at Frome, as a registration programme for cane cutters is in place. He said that the cane cutters are participating fully in the exercise and are anxious to begin reaping the cane in the field.
In the meantime, Mr. Smith explained that because of the later than usual start of the crop at Frome, some cane farmers from the Frome area have been sending their reaped cane to the Appleton Estate Factory in St. Elizabeth. Reaping at Frome normally starts in early December.
“In order to ensure that farmers could reap their ready cane, we have agreed to allow them to send up to 500 tons of cane per day to the Appleton factory,” he told JIS News, noting that this arrangement is reciprocal whenever there is a problem at either factory.