A meeting was organised by leading sugar companies of UP for a consensus on cane sharing in the 2006-07 sugar season. |
The companies are believed to have come to an understanding that there will be no poaching on the cane areas of rival sugar mills. |
The meeting, organised at the initiative of the chief executive of Bajaj Hindusthan Limited, Kushagra Bajaj, was attended by Dhruv M Sawhney, chairman and managing director of Triveni Engineering and Industries; G S Mann, chairman and managing director of Simbhaoli Sugar Mills; Gaurav Goel, managing director of Dhampur Sugar Mills; K B Lal, executive director of Shadilal Enterprises (Shamli factory); and Shailendra Mohan of the Dainik Jagran Group (Shakumbari and Allied Industries at Saharanpur). |
According to Mann, the meeting was purely "exploratory" in nature, and the companies discussed the prospects of the coming season given the fall in sugar prices. |
"The companies are by and large of a consensus that they should avoid poaching on another's reserved area," said Lal. |
Goel said, "We just tried to see that we do not go into the area of other mills, and it was a very routine affair." |
In the 2005-06 season, there have been instances of mills offering incentives to farmers to poach on the reserved areas of other mills. |
Most of these companies have set up new mills that will start crushing in the coming season and are likely to face a stiff competition over supply of cane. |
Bajaj has set up three new sugar mills (at Saharanpur, Lakhimpur and Pilibhit), Triveni, three new mills (at Rampur, Moradabad and JP Nagar), Simbhaoli has set up a mill at Ghaziabad, and Dhampur has set up one at Badayun. |
All together, 18 new mills with a combined capacity of about 1.11 lakh tonnes crushed daily will become operational in UP in the 2006-07 season. |