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REPORTS: CUBA |
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Expanding
Sugar Cane By-Products Sector with
Foreign Investment
Patricia
Grogg
HAVANA, (IPS) - Cuba hopes to expand its
sugar cane derivatives industry by
opening it up to foreign investment and
incorporating greater added value into
the products it sells on the depressed
international market.
The new strategy of Cuba's socialist
government included the closure of
nearly half of the country's 156
state-owned sugar mills last year, in
order to bring production levels closer
into line with demand.
Local authorities say Cuba's sugar cane
industry must be transformed into ''a
modern, diversified enterprise with
greater added value'' -- an undertaking
that will require heavy foreign
investment.
Sugar was the mainstay of the Cuban
economy until it was surpassed by
tourism in the late 1990s as the biggest
foreign exchange-earner. Another major
source of hard currency is remittances
sent to their families by Cuban exiles.
Modernising the sugar industry will also
boost electricity generation, as one ton
of sugar cane biomass -- consisting of
bagasse and foliage -- can produce an
average of 27 kilowatts during harvest
season from December to May.
According to official statistics, Cuba
has the technology to produce 21
different kinds of sugar, including
organically produced sugar, as well as
rum and other alcoholic beverages and
dozens of other by-products.
Bagasse itself, the fibre left after the
cane is crushed to remove the juice,
serves as raw material for 65 different
products, and sugar cane syrup is used
to produce liquor, livestock feed and
other derivatives.
''We are forced to seek financing
possibilities,'' said the director of
the governmental Cuban Institute of
Research on Sugar Cane Derivatives, Luis
Gálvez.
As of late last year, there were just
under a dozen joint ventures in Cuba
operating with capital from Spain,
Mexico, Canada, Italy and France in the
sugar cane by-products industry, which
accounts for eight percent of the sugar
industry.
But Gálvez said an accelerated effort
to develop the industry by introducing
modern technology would increase that
proportion to 20 or 25 percent.
''In the restructuring of the sugar
industry, priority has been put on the
production of sugar cane by-products,''
the official told journalists.
The plans include the upgrading of
around 20 distilleries and the
construction of several more, to
increase production of alcoholic
beverages for export to markets in Latin
America and Europe.
A project for producing fuel alcohol
from sugar cane, based on technology
from Brazil and European countries,
could also bear fruit in the
medium-term, said Gálvez, who added
that ''we must not be left out of that
trend, due to economic and ecological
reasons.''
Local authorities expect fuel alcohol,
which has been profitable in a number of
countries, to begin to be produced
before the end of the year.
Fuel alcohol or ethanol is a high-octane
alcohol produced from the fermentation
of sugar or converted starch. It can be
used alone or in mixtures with gasoline,
to produce a high-performance fuel that
cuts toxic exhaust emissions.
An expert in renewable energy sources
told IPS that a mixture containing 10
percent fuel alcohol produces up to 30
percent less carbon monoxide than
petroleum-based fuels.
Brazil is currently the world's biggest
producer and exporter of fuel alcohol,
with an installed capacity to produce
600,000 litres a day.
Around 100 million dollars a year in
sugar cane derivatives were produced at
the industry's peak in the second half
of the 1980s. But the economic crisis of
the 1990s, triggered by the
disappearance of the Soviet Union and
the east European socialist bloc, curbed
the growth of the sector.
Sugar constitutes approximately 10
percent of sugar cane content. The rest
of the cane's organic material,
traditionally undervalued in Cuba, is
potentially more valuable than the sugar
itself.
Economists consulted by IPS said Cuba is
heading in the right direction with its
strategy of diversifying the sugar
industry, given the volatile prices of
sugar on the international market.
If the projections of experts play out,
the current harvest could hit just 2.1
million tons or even less -- lower than
the yields seen in the mid-1930s, and a
far cry from the harvests of six to
eight million tons of the 1980s.
The harvest that is now coming to an end
was the first in the wake of the
restructuring of the sugar cane
industry, which reduced the area planted
in sugar cane for industrial uses from
1.5 million hectares to 800,000
hectares.
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