Days after offering voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) to employees on its payroll, the State’s lone government mill, Mysugar, has vigorously started drawing up plans to offset a portion of its losses.
The profitability of Mysugar (Mysore Sugar Company Ltd.) has witnessed a decline in the past decade owing to an increase in cost of operation, spending a huge sum on repair or overhaul works, and non-availability of labourers to harvest sugarcane on time. Consequently, the 1934-established mill has been registered as a ‘sick unit’ with the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR).
Mysugar, one among the oldest operating mills in Asia and one on which farmers of 102 villages in the district are dependent for their livelihood, recently resorted to laying off employees through VRS.
M.N. Ajay Nagabhushan, managing director of Mysugar, said the management would initiate measures to increase the mill’s profitability. A proposal is being prepared to set up a distillery (with a capacity of at least 80 kilolitre a day), produce ethanol, generate power, and enhance the production capacity.
The mill was popular in the 1950s for producing ethanol and supplying it to the Maharashtra government for operating public transport services in Bombay. Nevertheless, the lackadaisical attitude of the management/persons concerned in later years resulted in the stopping of ethanol production.
Furthermore, an ambitious plan of generating power has remained idle for over a decade. Mysugar established a co-generation unit in 2007 with then aim of producing at least 13 MW of power a day. But, in spite of overhauling works on several occasions, the mill never produced power.
“We will take measures to establish the distillery and commence power generation,” Mr. Nagabhushan told The Hindu on Tuesday.
Quantity enhancement
Currently, the mill is crushing cane at an average quantity of 2,200 tonnes a day. It is expected to be increased by at least 40%, to five lakh tonnes a day, during the crushing season 2019-20.
The reorganising and restructuring of all operational activities will commence shortly, and shall be completed before the beginning of next season. The mill will be revived on the lines of Central public sector units, Mr. Nagabhushan said.
On privatising the mill, Mr. Nagabhushan said: “Only cane harvesting and transportation processes will be outsourced from the crushing season 2019-2020 as one of the revival or reformative measures.”
The tender for off-season maintenance of Mysugar is expected to be invited in January 2019. Concurrently, the critical vacancies will be filled up.
To a query, another senior officer, on condition of anonymity, said: “The laying off of regular employees will not affect sugar production. The newly installed crushing unit is capable of crushing six lakh tonnes of cane in a season. Merely 20 employees can operate it.”