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BSI shipment of sugar from Big Creek Port will hit stevedores hard, if implemented

GeneralBSI shipment of sugar from Big Creek Port will hit stevedores hard, if implemented

BELIZE CITY, Wed. Sept. 25, 2019– The Belize Sugar Industry (BSI) has been exploring another way of transporting its sugar from its factory to the ships for the export market. Traditionally, the sugar is shipped on barges and then loaded onto a ship, which stays around 6 weeks in the harbor until the loading process is completed.

The method being looked at by the sugar company will bypass the Belize City port in the Caesar Ridge area of Port Loyola.

For almost two months now, BSI sugar has been trucked from the north to south on the highways to the Big Creek Port in the Stann Creek District. If the sugar company finds that it is more cost effective to transport its sugar overland and store it at facilities in Big Creek until the ships arrive, that will be an economic blow to Belize City stevedores, who have become accustomed to working on sugar boats for long stretches.

“I know that they were trucking some of the sugar to Big Creek, but that is a long drive,” Arturo “Tux” Vasquez, the receiver for the Port of Belize Limited, told Amandala in an interview.

Vasquez admitted that the Port of Belize Limited will lose money if BSI goes ahead and bypasses the Belize City port.

“If the sugar goes to Big Creek, the stevedores will lose money because they won’t be loading those barges anymore,” Vasquez added.

Vasquez went on to explain that if BSI can store the sugar, it would be a lot better than what they are doing at the Belize City port, because they’d only have to load the ship, and that can happen in a day or two.

We asked Vasquez whether there has been any improvement to the port since the receivership began.

Vasquez said that around 2006, about one year after the receivership took charge of the business of the port, about 15 million dollars was invested to improve the facility.

BSI Public Relations Officer, William Neal, told us that the cane farmers and all the other stakeholders in the industry have been looking at cutting costs.

Neal confirmed that BSI “have been doing experimental tests” with the overland transportation of sugar.

Neal said that when a sugar boat comes to Belize, it costs the company about US$10,000 per day, and the cane farmers have to share those costs.

“It is an experiment; we have to do a comparative analysis, and then we can make a decision going forward from that,” Neal said.

We asked Neal how many trucks are involved in transporting the sugar to Big Creek in the trial period, and he said he wasn’t sure. Neal told us that the port in Belize City is not a deep water port that can take in the ships, and the port has not made the investments to become one.

In a reference to the Big Creek port, Neal said that they have just invested millions of dollars in it. He said that a port is a key facility and they have to look at how they can increase their efficiency.

“We are under pressure from the cane farmers to cut those costs, especially when you have low prices like right now. You have to explore every cost-cutting measure,” Neal explained.

“We just have to do the experiment and the analysis, because you know, when you have 5,000 cane farmers, you know what it’s like when they are upset,” Neal said.

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