Plans are afoot to build a new sugar mill in Rakiraki, the Minister for Sugar Charan Jeath Singh has confirmed to farmers in the town.
Projected to cost about $100 million, the new mill will either be a refinery or ethanol plant.
Meanwhile, the plight of the sugar industry was brought to the fore during the Fiji Sugar Corporation’s (FSC) AGM in the West yesterday, as FSC chairman Pradeep Lal shared plans for the corporation to reduce its debt from $485.9 million to $285m.
Mr Lal said the number of active sugarcane growers had reduced from 20,524 to 10,872 over the past 25 years, a decrease of more than 47 per cent.
He also confirmed that FSC had sold $209.7m worth of sugar for the 2023 financial year.
(Additional reporting by REPEKA NASIKO)
