Song Lam Sugarcane Joint Stock Company: Innovation for development

(Baonghean) - To improve the efficiency of raw material areas, meet production and business requirements in the context of development and integration, Song Lam Sugarcane Joint Stock Company has implemented many new mechanisms and policies. In particular, being proactive, innovating reinvestment forms, closely linking to create stable raw material areas.

Care for raw material areas

Entering the 2016-2017 crushing season, the weather was bad, raining almost all season long, making it difficult to supply sugarcane and dispatch trucks. Many roads in the raw material area were seriously degraded, especially the internal roads. In addition, farmers did not follow orders to harvest sugarcane, so in some places, farmers cut down sugarcane without orders, causing black and red sugarcane, and reduced quality, typically in Thung Coong, Thanh Son, Thach Ngan (Con Cuong).

Song Lam Sugarcane Joint Stock Company applies technology to plant sugarcane by machine, increasing productivity by 3-4 times compared to before. Photo: Luong Mai

However, with the close attention and direction of the Board of Directors, the General Director of the company, the solidarity, coordination and timely support of departments, offices and all officers and employees, the factory has had a safe pressing season. The inspection work was well done, the downtime due to equipment failure was quite low (accounting for 2%). There were quite a lot of seasonal contract workers registered to work, so the arrangement of manpower at the beginning of the pressing season was very favorable. The total standing sugarcane area reached over 1,000 hectares, the total sugarcane output reached 61,000 tons, the average sugarcane yield reached 53.3 tons/ha. The actual pressing capacity reached over 749 tons/day, the diameter of the warehouse reached over 6,000 tons. The average sugar content reached 10.22 CCS, higher than the previous year, the pressing efficiency increased significantly to 93.78% compared to 93.04% last year. In particular, last year the company brought in more than 3,000 tons of new sugarcane varieties to expand the entire sugarcane growing area. This is also the second year the unit has implemented data management and harvest operations using a computer system to ensure accuracy and speed in sugarcane payment.

Despite many difficulties, the company has overcome all of them, focusing on overcoming and doing a good job of environmental protection; investing hundreds of billions of VND to apply the most advanced production equipment lines in Europe, such as sugar processing production lines, bio-fertilizer production lines and alcohol production lines. The environmental wastewater treatment system in the production area has been invested over 15 billion VND with the synchronization of wastewater treatment areas, flue gas treatment areas, and bio-fertilizer production areas. These systems are operated and performed quite effectively, helping the company complete the clean production project on schedule.

LK 92-11 sugarcane variety is resistant to pests and diseases, does not flower, and does not have weed buds and is introduced into the raw material area of ​​Song Lam Sugarcane Joint Stock Company. Photo: Luong Mai

Persist in development goals

With the goal of ensuring the factory's designed capacity of 3,000 tons/day after 2020, the sugarcane growing area for the Company must be guaranteed from 5,500 - 6,000 hectares. However, the land fund for developing raw sugarcane in Anh Son is currently planned for both Song Lam and Song Con sugar factories. Meanwhile, many localities are not determined with the sugarcane growing plan. Although the company has signed a commitment on investment and purchase price according to the contract, there is still a situation where people chase after profits and break the planning. At the same time, the output for sugar products is currently facing competition from many factories, including the smuggled sugar system, causing the factory's business situation to face many problems and become unstable.

When discussing breakthrough solutions to ensure development goals, Mr. Chu Ngoc Tu - General Director of Song Lam Sugar Joint Stock Company proposed: "To bring mechanization into production, mechanized cultivation on large-scale fields, it is necessary to invest in high-capacity machines. The State needs to have policies to support farmers in implementing land consolidation, plot exchange and preferential loans in sugarcane production. On the government's side, there needs to be reasonable solutions in granting investment licenses to factories producing and processing agricultural products. Avoid the situation where people chase after different types of crops with low efficiency, and raw materials for factories easily fall into an unstable state."

The Company's sugar products ensure quality and are increasingly asserting themselves in the domestic and export markets. Photo: Luong Mai

According to Mr. Tu, the company's Board of Directors has had appropriate investment policies for the raw material area such as inviting sugarcane experts to help increase capacity and production efficiency at the factory, saving production costs, checking equipment lines to avoid loss, helping to recover higher products, training agricultural staff, continuing to innovate production lines to increase capacity. At the same time, the company focuses on introducing new varieties with high yield and good quality into production, implementing synchronous mechanization from land preparation, planting, care and harvesting, investing in intensive fertilizer cultivation, creating many large-scale raw material fields.

Luong Mai