10 sugar mills start cane crushing in UP

The sugarcane crushing is off to a sluggish start in Uttar Pradesh with about 10 units in western region functioning and 50 odd commencing procurement of cane as a prelude to crushing. Of the 10 units, six belong to the private sector, while the rest are the federation mills.

There are about 130 functional sugar mills in UP in the government, private and cooperative sectors.

“The crushing has started in Saharanpur and Meerut divisions and slowly mills in other western UP divisions will start. The crushing season will gain momentum after the Ganga Snan festival on November 20 and 21,” a senior sugarcane department official told Business Standard here.

The mills in Moradabad and Bareilly divisions will start next, followed by mills in central UP and lastly the units in eastern UP will follow suit.

Although, the sugar mills had earlier approached the Allahabad High Court challenging the fixing of cane State Advised Price (SAP) by UP, he said the mills had promised to pay SAP levels in Form C.

Form ‘C’ is signed (as token of acceptance of contract) by the representatives of the sugar mills and cane growers’ society under the UP Sugarcane (Regulation of Supply and Purchase) Order, 1954.

“All the mills will start crushing by the first week of December,” Puranpur cane society chairman Shrikant Singh said.

On November 2, UP had announced a record hike of Rs 40/quintal in SAP to Rs 205-210/quintal for common and early varieties respectively. The industry had expressed its inability to pay at this level due to lower realisation of sugar. The industry maintained it could only pay at last year’s SAP level of around Rs 165/quintal.

The millers contended UP had no power to fix SAP after the fixation of a fair and remunerative price (FRP) by the Centre, which stands at Rs 139/quintal for this crushing season.

“The crushing has been delayed also because there is still some moisture in sugarcane in the terai belt due to late rainfall,” UP Sugar Federation managing director C P Mishra said adding the start of crushing season could not be considered as ‘much delayed’.

Last week, chief minister Mayawati had directed for action against mills, who failed to start operations immediately, since the cane farmers wanted their fields vacant for sowing rabi crop.

During 2010-11, UP cane acreage and production has been estimated at 2.10 million hectares and 124 million tonnes respectively.