Four decades after loss-making,

Goemkarponn desk
PONDA: The only Government run Sanjivani Sugar factory at Dharbandora that has run in losses of crores and has shut down its operations for past two years due to annual heavy expenditure of around Rs 5 crore on maintenance of its machinery, the authorities after four decades is planning to bring the factory on the path of profit by setting up a Ethanol Producing Plant from crushing of sugar cane.
Except for a few years, the factory has been running in losses in more than 45 years since its inception.
The appointed Government administrator, Chitamani Perni, says there is a huge demand for ethanol in the country, and that’s why he is hoping the ethanol plant would be profitable.
He said today, only after approval by Agriculture Department they have given assignment order to Pune based Deccan Sugar Technologist Association India (DSTA) requesting them to prepare a Detailed Project Report (DPR) for setting up a new 40,000 litre per day capacity Ethanol producing plant with zero liquid discharge system from sugarcane juice/ Molasses/ grain-based at Sanjivani Factory.
He said some existing machinery/ infrastructure at the Factory would be useful and asked for consideration while preparing DPR.
The Administrator says that the project would be operated on PPP Model after government approval.
He said sugar needs a lot of processes, and currently, there is not much demand, and the rate for sugar at the international and domestic market is low.
The government spent a lot of money on ethanol import, so ethanol production could be a viable and sustainable option for Sanjivani.
He said the Government of India is encouraging Ethanol Production as 20 per cent of ethanol need to mix with fuel; currently, there is only 8 per cent produced by the country while there is the deficit is imported, and the government of India has set a target to achieve this deficit by the year 2025.
He added, “if we produce ethanol, then the petroleum companies in Goa would buy it from Sanjeevani, and it would also benefit farmers as they would get paid in 21 days. The project could be profitable. We set up a target of producing 40,000 litres per day of ethanol. We are hoping to run the Ethanol Plant for 270 days in a year with Goan sugarcane farmers are capable of supplying 50,000 thousand metric tonnes per year while additional sugarcane can be procured from farmers of our neighbouring state.”
He said that if Goan farmers produced one lakh metric tonne, there would be no need to import sugarcane.
He said the detailed project report would come in six weeks, but he expected that after the launch of the ethanol plant as there is huge demand, he hopes to earn a net profit of Rs 5 per every one litre of ethanol Production.
“That is if there is 40,000 liter production per day, then there would be a net profit of Rs 2 lakh,” the Administrator says.
He said the project would be financed through a bank, the central government would provide some subsidy scheme for the project.
Goan Variety sugarcane gives less recovery, so Sanjivani Sugar Factory has imported five high production varieties of high quality, a seedling from Maharashtra to get better recovery for sugarcane production Karnataka and grown up in nursery that would provide high Production with the recovery of 11 per cent.
This is as per the suggestion of the facilitation committee led by Adv. Narendra Savoikar.
“We planted them in 5 Hectare land in March separately according to variety which is now grown up in six months and would come for harvesting in next four months. We will supply seedlings to our farmers at a subsidised rate to increase Production and better recovery,” he said.
He said for the year 2019-20 government paid Rs 10.30 crore to farmers for the 26391 metric tonnes supplied by them; this included per tonne Rs 1200, while the government assured price rs 1800 rs 600 for harvesting per tonne.
For the year 2020-21 government took a policy decision to pay them Rs 3000 per tonne considering their average highest yield of the past five years.
As per this policy, the farmers get Rs 3000 per tonne and are free to sell their cane to any sugar factory in a neighbouring factory and earn income from it.
Thus, farmers are to be paid a total amount of Rs 12.50 crore for the year, and out of this 80 Percent, that is Rs 8.84, is already cleared, and the rest 20 per cent would be removed soon, he said.