Sugar seminar to focus on sustainable growth

Date 21-Jul-2010        Source THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS        Reporter Deepa Jainani        News Id 230

Riding on the back of its highly successful seminar on sugar last year, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is planning a sequel to it this year. Titled ‘Sugar Tech 10: Integrated approach towards sustainable development’, the day-long seminar would work on creating and sustaining an environment which is conducive to the growth of the industry in India, especially in a year when a glut is expected to flood the market. “Season after season the sugar industry has been encountering unique challenges and with the advent of newer product lines in the sector, profitability is no more linked to production of sugar alone. Prudent management decision to promote improved varieties of sugarcane, inclusion of cost effective technologies, and combination of by-products and superior understanding of cutting edge contemporary state policies are also likely impact the bottom line. It is important that the leaders of industry consider development of integrated sugar complexes from a new perspective and identify opportunities to generate additional surplus to feed the economy and benefit the industry, farmers, consumers and the government alike,” said Anil Shukla, head of CII northern region. While last year’s session dealt with the increasingly shorter crushing season, this year, the problem of plenty and the ways of tackling it are expected to rule. “Mill managements need to adopt a combination of by-products such as power/co-generation, spirits and alcohols, ethanol, CDM, paper and cardboard, to make significant contribution to the bottom lines and also add to the income of the farmers,” added Shukla, adding that the industry has been upgrading technologies at all fronts to make itself competitive in the market. “Application of energy efficient equipment, instrumentation and automation for optimising capacity utilisation has become a norm for the industry,” he added.