During his Budget Speech on August 13, Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler told the public of plans to restructure the sugar industry. He noted that it had been in decline for years, having suffered due to loss of preferential treatment by Europe and high overheads which were more than its earnings.
The industry, he said, was facing an “ignominious collapse.”
That would not be allowed to happen under the present administration, he declared. In fact, it had gotten financing from Japan to carry out a “major restructuring” under what would be known as the Barbados Sugar Industry Project.
Under this plan, “an existing sugar factory” would undergo “re-engineering” so that it could multi-task, as it were. Sugar for export. Molasses for alcohol. Electricity for the national grid.
It’s got my heart speeding, my friends. Of course, the likelihood that it will turn out to be another white elephant, another complex operation (like the Transport Board) with half of its equipment not working, is, well, very small.
Funding, said Mr. Sinckler, had been “agreed” with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Japanese commercial banks for up to US$270 million, and the project would get going early next year. It would, promised Mr Sinckler, “radically reform sugar agriculture while having very positive spin-off effects on non-sugar crop production.” (Budget Speech, page 29).
Two days later, on August 15, people living near Andrews Sugar Factory went to a “town hall” meeting, to which they had been invited by flyer. They included residents of Fisherpond, Parris Hill, Sweet Vale and, of course, Andrews.
They were treated to a PowerPoint presentation by Justin Jennings-Wray of Stantec, a consulting firm located in Toronto, with an office here.
Updating his audience on the “Andrews Sugar Factory Expansion,” he pointed out that a formal application for permission to “expand and upgrade” the factory had been submitted, along with terms of reference, to Town & Country Planning.
And while the meeting was not required as part of said application process, it was felt that public participation was an “essential” part of the environmental impact process. “We are here to share information about the project,” one of the slides said, adding, “We would like to hear your views and concerns.”
I don’t know what sort of feedback Mr Jennings-Wray received either at the meeting itself or afterwards, but I understand there is a group of dissenters in the midst of all this restructuring excitement. Some people just want to spoil a good party.
One wonders how much of their concerns will make it into the final Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). After all, the money is already “agreed”, is it not?
The residents’ main bone of contention, it seems, is that this plan is not just for an upgraded sugar factory, but for a mega plant that will do much more than
just make sugar. Indeed, since there will be no bagasse produced outside the period when sugar is being produced (the first being the residue of the second), there will be no raw material from canes to feed the electricity-producing component of the super factory.
Therefore, a plant called river tamarind will be introduced to Barbados and will be grown in sufficient quantities (it is proposed) somewhere in the Scotland District.
That means trucks driving to and from Andrews year-round, feeding the super factory.
Little wonder then that one of the major “impacts” being studied is how “commuters on primary roadways to be used for the transportation of sugar and river tamarind to the factory” will be affected.
In the negative, I am told. In an email to me, one area resident said it was felt that “the massive increase in the footprint of the present factory will impact negatively on all the residents in close proximity.”
Further, building a “megaplant for bulk sugar production” – the output of which would be processed into refined sugar and molasses in addition to a 25 megawatt biomass power-generating facility to be fueled by river tamarind ” – would require that “over 25 acres of prime agricultural land adjacent to the existing Andrews facility” be taken out of sugar cultivation.
Another concern, my friend wrote in his email, was that “such a major capital expenditure seems to be going ahead with no real public dissemination of information about what exactly is planned and what led to the decision to site it at Andrews rather than in an industrial zone.”
There was an opinion, he said, that “Andrews is not the place to erect a power plant, and either Bulkeley or Lower Estate (amongst others) would be far more sensible.”
Well, the horse has long left the stable in that regard. Ten studies are currently underway, mostly being carried out by Stantec, and I predict that they will all – generally, taken as a whole, and notwithstanding a few recommendations along the way – point to the green lighting for this project.
The EIA and the SIA (replace ‘environmental’ with ‘social’) will both be completed by the end of November.
Sugar, apparently, is about to be saved. At a mere cost of close to US$300 million. But don’t worry about that. It will be paid back, with a similar amount added in interest, by our grandchildren.
