FROME, Westmoreland – THE Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ) Holdings Ltd will as of today suspend the production of sugar for roughly two weeks at the Frome sugar factory here due to unfavourable weather conditions in the sugar cane-growing areas.

“The rains since last month have just not subsided and so the sucrose content in the cane continues to decline because as the cane absorbs the water the sucrose content decreases and so we have to process more canes than usual to make sugar,” Frome estate’s general manager John Gayle explained.

He argued that as a result of the declining sucrose content cane farmers making deliveries to the factory have been suffering heavy losses, as a result of low payments being made to them.

“Everybody is paid on the sucrose content of the cane so when the sucrose is low the price per tonne cane is also low. So we have decided to cease the harvesting,” Gayle told the Observer West yesterday.

He noted that the farmers are now being paid less than $800 per tonne in first payment for canes delivered, which — he pointed out — cannot adequately cover their harvesting costs.

The 2009/2010 sugar crop began at Frome — the island’s largest sugar-processing plant — a month ago with industry players expressing confidence that the factory will produce 42,000 tonnes of the sweetener during the five month-long crop.

Yesterday, Gayle told the Observer West that the two-week suspension would not result in a revision of the target set by management because sugar production at the factory is ahead of schedule.

Up to yesterday, he said the factory had manufactured 5,700 tonnes of sugar from the crushing of 77,000 tonnes of cane.