The Lautoka Mill crushed a total of 514,892 tonnes of cane, producing 47,602 tonnes of sugar in the 2022 crushing season.
The Fiji Sugar corporation says the burnt cane percentages remained exponentially high throughout the season, thus adversely impacting the process house operations while mill stoppages due to poor harvesting effort persisted since the start of crush.
As a consequence, Lautoka Mill was forced to reduce rate of operations in view of thinning cane supply on a regular basis.
It says considering the design capacity of the mill allows for a weekly crush of 40,000 tonnes cane however it was observed that the average tonnes cane crushed was below 25,000 tonnes per week due to low cane supply, particularly in the weekend
It also says cane that has not been harvested in the Lautoka Mill areas is being carted to Rarawai Mill while growers with left over cane are being assisted by the field staff.
FSC says a robust cane development programme has been implemented by the Field Team with an aggressive focus to increase cane production through increase in area under cane and improvement in average cane yields to acceptable targets.
