Sony Sugar cuts production by 40 percent due to cane poaching

South Nyanza Sugar Company Chairman Ambrose Weda. [Kepher Otieno]

MIGORI, KENYA: Sony Sugar Company management lost half a billion in the last financial year due to cane poaching which has cut back their daily production by 40 percent.

The management now fears that if the trend continues then its production capacity would be grossly affected and that could even force its operations to grind to a halt, if poaching is not contained.

Investigations around the Awendo sugar belt established that some of the cane farmers contracted to the Company were delivering cane to private mills even after being helped by Sony to develop their land.

This is one of the reasons that over Sh1 billion invested in land development which involves, ploughing, harrowing, furrowing, and supplies of seed cane and fertilizer to the farmers may not be recovered as envisaged.

The company has over the years been investing heavily in cane development as one of the extrinsic motivation factors to boost the farmer’s drive to grow more sugarcane to sustain its daily production.

But currently, investigations showed that the miller is operating at 40 percent which is way below its installed production capacity due to an acute shortage of raw material created by massive cane poaching.

Sony is currently crushing less than 3,500 installed capacity, Sukari and Transmara crushes 2,000.

When the Standard toured the area, the management confirmed that indeed, their cane production system was threatened by poaching of their raw material by rivals in the private sector.

For instance, in the year 2011/12 the gross value of cane lost was Sh27, 792,000 million, poached in an area covering 117 hectares.

Sony Sugar’s Managing Director Bernard Otieno says they have raises the matter with the private miller’s management who admitted liability and agreed to stop poaching.