Sugar mill work paused for maintenance in Vellore

VELLORE: Vellore Cooperative Sugar Mill’s high sugar recovery which is slightly less than 11 per cent at present resulted in the mill stopping operations for a week to clean all moving parts to ensure better crushing and further improved recovery, Chairman M Anandan revealed on Wednesday.

“We issued orders to all staff to inform farmers not to cut cane till the mill started operations again as cut cane will dry resulting in the sugar recovery coming down,” said Anandan. The pace of crushing has resulted in the mill planning to crush slightly more than 2.50 lakh tonnes by April. “Till now the facility has crushed 1.90 lakh tonnes,” Anandan said. “Though it was originally planned to crush 2.30 lakh tonnes before crushing stopped, additional crushing tonnage was made possible by another 25,000 tonnes being diverted from the Tiruttani Sugar Mills recently,” he said.

Another plus point for the mill is that its cogeneration plant has to date produced 2.63 crore units of which the mills used 1.27 crore units for its operations with the remaining 1.36 crore units being exported to the state grid.

However, the common feeling among cane farmers attached to the mill was that the it could crush more if the long pending Palar-Ponnai link project became a reality. Anandan said, “Yes, if the project becomes operational it will ensure continued flows in the Palar based on which farmers in Vellore, Ranipet and Tirupattur districts will opt for growing more sugarcane. This in turn will help the defunct Ambur Cooperative Sugar Mill at Vadapudupet and the Tirupattur Cooperative Sugar at Kethandapatti to start functioning to their full capacities again.