Sony Sugar to Stop Operations for 6 Weeks
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- June 4, 2021
South Nyanza Sugar Company (Sony sugar) will shut down operations starting on Monday 7 June 2021 for six weeks, the sugar miller company is at a breakdown, whereby it owes farmers Sh 1billion unpaid wages for the last 13 months.
Sony Sugar, which was established 41 years ago and delivers clean and fresh sugar, has recently experienced losses.
According to company Director-General Stephen Ligawa, he hopes the government will come at hand to help the company go back to its former position.
The situation was among the projects forwarded to the government to look into it. During President Uhuru visit to Kisumu county for the Madaraka day celebrations, there was no mention of the company.
“Because of this situation, Sony management has decided to temporarily shut the facility,” said Ligawa.
“Output from the unit amount of cane has gone down but we hope there will be a bailout from the government. We are running at 70 per cent losses.”
Following the breakdown in the company farmers now prefer growing other crops or even selling sugar cane to other private millers.
This made the production rate low earlier.
“Production had become unsustainable for us. If we accumulate cane per week, we mill about 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of cane. This is way below the expected 10,000 tonnes,” the MD said.
The company hopes for improvement, better machines after the six-week break.
