With only four sugar factories currently in operation in the island, the Golden Grove Sugar Company in Duckenfield, St Thomas, is constantly on a mission to remain viable in one of Jamaica’s longest-running industries.

The company has undergone several changes in recent years, such as being acquired by manufacturing conglomerate Seprod Limited in 2009 which resulted in the renaming from the then St Thomas Sugar Company. Under Seprod, the sugar company has also outsourced all farming operations and now places focus on the factory production of sugar.

The most recent move by the sugar company was the gaining of a marketing agency status which allows the company to control its marketing and sales operations, and will see them producing sugar for sale on both the domestic and export markets.

According to commercial Manager for the Golden Grove Sugar Company, Major (Retired) Evrol Dixon, the industry within which the sugar company operates is “a peculiar one and has a lot of regulations and structures that a lot of other businesses may not be subject to”.

“It has a very long history, and we have to be respectful of that, and it is also one that has many different components involved in making it successful. Unlike most industries, the main component here is a local production,” Dixon said.

“We don’t import cane; we don’t import this raw material because this raw material has to be locally made. So all of that is subjected to all of the vagaries of weather and people and equipment and all of that,” he continued.

The mechanical engineer stated that, while the business of sugar relies on 100 per cent domestic input, which is good, it too has its challenges, especially with regards to how it is regulated. He stated that there is also the challenge of operating in an industry that has several other components that are not present in a lot of manufacturing entities.

Despite the challenges, Dixon maintained that the sugar factory tries its best to ensure its output is of the highest quality through all the stages of sugar production.

“The process of producing sugar from cane goes through several steps. The first part is called cane preparation and that is preparing the cane to go through the mill. Afterwards, you have the milling stage in which you extract the juice from the cane that now has to go through a clarification process using a clarifier that extracts all of the other impurities and undesirables from the cane juice,” the manager explained.

Following this stage, Dixon said the now pure cane juice is what is further processed to become sugar. It goes through two stages, the first being the evaporator that gets rid of the extra sugar and the second stage being the centrifuge which is used to extract the molasses from the sugar resulting in the final and pure finished product.

In the case of by-products, such as molasses, which is used primarily by the local rum industry, the factory sells it to the Caribbean Molasses Company where it becomes a part of a pool for local molasses sales to the distilleries.

On the other hand, bagasse, which is the cane refuse left after juicing, is kept and used as fuel to help power the factory. Dixon said, while they still use electricity from the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), the hope is for the factory to become independent of JPS.

The Golden Grove Sugar Company has roughly 173 people who work in the factory itself, which operates 24 hours a day every day of the year, xcept on Good Friday and Christmas Day.

According to Dixon, 90 per cent of the workforce is native to St Thomas, with the other 10 per cent compromising of highly technical persons and managerial persons that could not be found within the parish.

“I must say the staff is very proud of the quality of the sugar we are producing, and we think it is as good as anything that is on the market, and certainly it is in the direction of being good as anything you see anywhere else in the Caribbean and we are looking forward to increased demands and being able to sustain it by producing enough sugar, and quality sugar,” Dixon said.