Average cane crushing days of the sugar mills have decreased by 20% increasing production costs, says minister Nitin Gadkari
sugar mills have reduced from 150 days to 120 days; down by 20% due to stagnant sugarcane production leading to increase in the cost of production for the industry, said Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways. He was speaking at the international conference on sugarcane organised by the Vasantdada Sugar Institute (VSI) at Pune today.
«The capacities of the sugar mills are increasing day-by- day whereas the sugarcane production remains static. This has resulted in a decrease in average cane crushing days from 150 days to 120 days.
For the remaining 200 days, the sugar mill machinery and manpower remain idle resulting in higher overhead and production costs,» said Gadkari, adding, «To turn around the situation, the sugarmill needs to find a solution to utilize these resources and increase the number of working days by diversifying their product portfolios to ethanol, compressed biogas CBG, hydrogen and other value-added products.»
«To achieve a target of 20% blending by 2025 and to meet the requirement of alcohol for industrial and potable purposes, around 12000 million liters of alcohol would be required. Due to the effective Government policies, the supply of ethanol to the Oil Marketing Companies has been increased by more than 13 times to about 5020 million litres in the year 2022-23 from 380 million litres in the last decade.
The ethanol blending percentage has also increased from 1.5% in 2013-14 to the targeted 12% in 2022-23,» said Gadkari.
Gadkari said that in the last 10 years, the sugar mills have generated revenue of more than 940 billions Rupees from the sale of ethanol. «The production of ethanol has led to reduction in import of crude oil, which has resulted in saving of valuable foreign exchange
