Crushing season from Dec 4 at Jind sugar mill

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jind, December 3

Reeling under a loss of Rs 126 crore, the Jind Cooperative Sugar Mill hopes to increase sugar recovery to 9.25 per cent as against last year’s 8.5 per cent in the forthcoming crushing season that begins December 4.

A total of 13,164 acres is under sugarcane in the district, of which 75 per cent area is under mid-variety and the remaining under early-variety. Since mid-variety fetches 10 per cent less profit than early variety due to higher input cost, officers said they have been trying to convince farmers to shift to early variety.

“We have been trying to convince farmers to start sowing early variety as it would increase profit by 10 per cent. We have met with some success as 25 per cent farmers in the district have switched to early varieties. Till some years ago, only 5 per cent farmers were opting for it,” said Jind SDM Virender Sehrawat, also the administrator of the mill.

About losses, he said the cost of running the mill was Rs 4,400 a quintal, but the market price of the sugar was only Rs 2,900. “The mill authorities have been losing Rs 1,500 a quintal,” he said. The mounting losses have applied brakes on the growth of the mill that has a crushing capacity is 16,000 quintals a day. The case to increase the mill’s capacity has been pending with the government for many years only because of increasing losses.

The crushing season will start from December 4 and conclude in the first week of April 2015. Authorities have prepared a database of mobile numbers of farmers of an area and will SMS them the date for purchase of produce. “We would issue slips as well as send SMS so farmers do not face inconvenience and bring their produce to the mill at the appropriate time,” said the SDM.