Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA) – Punjab Zone has taken a strong exception to the information published in section of press not Pakistan Observer “13 Mills Underreport Over 200,000 Tons of Sugar”.
PSMA said that Sugarcane” and “Sugar Recovery of Mill” have been misinterpreted. Under the “Sugar Policy 2009-10” that is now sub-judice, the Punjab Government had endeavored to implement a new payment system based on sucrose contents of sugarcane, for which a mobile cane laboratory was introduced on an experimental basis between 2010 and 2012.
The same mobile cane testing lab is now claimed to have been used recently i.e. during the 2019-2020 crushing season, to determine sucrose contents in sugarcane in different areas across Punjab.
Notwithstanding actual accuracy of these figures, the results merely depict estimates based on a few sugarcane field samples and are far from the factual “Sucrose contents of Sugarcane” received by the mills where the same depends on variables like cleanliness of cane, freshness of cane, variety of cane and weather cconditions during harvesting etc.
Further, it is pertinent to note that such an exercise was undertaken independently without taking on board any of the concerned sugar mills and hence no data was collected regarding process efficiency and manufacturing losses of each mill.
In the absence of such data i.e. manufacturing efficiency and process losses, claims of arriving at “Sugar Recovery of the Mills” cannot be substantiated and application of C.C.S, the referred Australian Formula, can only determine “Sucrose Content of Sugarcane” or arrive at an estimate of “Raw Sugar Recovery”, at best, after making certain assumptions.
Needless to say, no Raw Sugar is being produced in Pakistan and hence the later figure i.e. Raw Sugar Recovery, bares no relevance.
