Minister for Sugar Charan Jeath Singh has revealed that a “brand new sugar mill” will be built in Rakiraki during a consultation with farmers in Lautoka on Friday.
However, earlier last year Mr Singh had said the proposed new sugar mill in Rakiraki would only produce ethanol and be operational throughout the year.
“In Rakiraki, it will be a brand new mill, with the program to have a refinery together with it so that it will make raw sugar and then refine sugar,” he said.
Mr Singh said the ministry had visited a few sugar mills in India and held discussions with regards to the mills and the sugar industry in Fiji.
“We are very seriously looking at fixing the Rakiraki mill,” Mr Singh said.
“We have spoken to a couple of companies in India and we will give the information gathered back to the FSC board and the board will analyse which company they will deal with to set-up a new mill.
“Out of the two companies we talked with, one wanted to form a joint venture and was interested in a partnership with us because they themselves are operating four sugar mills in India.”
He said the ministry would look at all the options available to them and would make a decisioon on which one to partner with if it was good for the industry.
When queried on the timeline for the set-up of the new mill in Rakiraki, Mr Singh said the proposed mill would not carry out workload similar to a “small match box but would be a mill capable of sizable production”.
“We are looking at about 3000 tonnes of canes crushed per day, so in a five-month season, we are looking at crushing about 450,000 tonnes of cane at the new mill in Rakiraki.”
He said they had passed the information on the new mill to the FSC board and it was now for them to address and see how soon it can be initiated.
