BELIZE CITY, Tues. Aug 3, 2021– Last week, representatives from BSI/ASR spoke to local media on various topics — one being the recent transfer of the company’s sugar loading operation from the Port of Belize (PBL), in Belize City, to the Big Creek Port, in Independence Village. The company asserts that the decision — which will result in the halving of the salaries of PBL stevedores and will adversely impact more than a hundred families on Belize’s Southside — was a purely business move and has nothing to do with the ongoing trade disputes between the stevedores and the Port of Belize.

Malcolm Mclachlan, the vice-president of international relations for the company, told local reporters that they have been eyeing the Big Creek Port since its construction was completed some time ago. With dredging finished, and with the prospect of loading raw sugar onto large vessels directly from the quayside in view, the company decided to invest in a loading facility at the location.

As readers would recall, the last ASR ship departed from the Port of Belize Ltd. at the height of a labor dispute between the Port of Belize and the stevedores who have worked on those sugar ships for years. Those workers had been engaged in a go-slow in a last-ditch effort by their union to get the Port of Belize to respond to their requests for dialogue in regard to key matters affecting the wellbeing and future livelihood of the port’s workers. The Christian Workers Union, in light of stevedores’ concerns about the rumored ASR move to Big Creek and the impact on their ability to make a living, had also sent a letter to the Government of Belize, to which was attached a copy of an MOU which had been signed in 2006 and which contained an agreement meant to ensure that the loading of dry goods such as sugar would not be transferred from Belize City to the Big Creek port — due to the financial impact such a move would clearly have.

Despite having received a copy of this agreement, however, the government of Belize gave the go-ahead to BSI/ASR to take its sugar operation to the Port of Big Creek, to the dismay of the stevedores, who will lose a chunk of their earnings because of this move.

While speaking to the media, Mclachlan said, “As you may be aware, we have been for decades now sending our sugar in barges and tugs a hundred and twenty-two miles up the New River and down the coast, where it is loaded in a very inefficient way into bulk cargo vessels using the ship grabs to do that directly into barges.”

What he suggested is that the move to Big Creek is an effort to address this inefficiency which has affected the industry for years.

“A year or so, obviously having seen this development in Big Creek, we took a trial run with trucking some sugar to Big Creek and loading it there. We evaluated that, and this is purely a business decision that we looked at investment in Big Creek to put in a loading facility for our raw sugar.” McLachlan said.

He added that the decision was made known to the Port of Belize and the stevedores prior to the recent move.

The company is now constructing a 30,000-ton warehouse equipped with loading gear at the Big Creek Port as a part of their purported move to modernize the sugar industry in Belize.