Having exited the sugar business last year, Seprod is speaking out about the poor management of the industry over the years.

Incurring losses of $730 million from sugar and closure of its Golden Grove sugar factory last year, the company is expressing regret that it was not successful in sugar manufacturing, given the potential of that business.

“After more than a decade of articulating necessary changes to the industry, it still taxes exports to fund an expensive regulatory structure,” Seprod Chairman PB Scott told shareholders in the company’s just-released 2019 annual report.

He was highly critical of the Jamaican Government’s failure so far to develop an energy strategy which would have aided the sugar industry and be incorporated into the national development requirements.

According to Scott, “The price of Jamaican molasses, which is the essence of Jamaican rum, is still at a discount rather than the premium it deserves, and the deregulation of the sales agency model came several years too late. As a result, the national production of sugar is less than 30 per cent of what it was even 10 years ago.”

The Seprod chairman pointed to the compounded investment that the country has made in the sugar industry, expressing the view that, “One must hope that policies will be put in place to correct this decline. We will not benefit, as we have exited the manufacturing of sugar, but we hope such changes will help Jamaica.”

Seprod acquired the Golden Grove sugar factory in 2009 as a failed venture and was never able to turn it around. The food manufacturer and marketing conglomerate previously disclosed losses of more than $4 billion from its decade as owner of the sugar estate and factory located in St Thomas.

It expects to recover some of the losses through the liquidation of the assets, which include the factory and cane in the fields.