State-owned The Mysore Sugar Company to start operations from August 2018
The Mysore Sugar Company Ltd. at Mandya, which was declared sick by the Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) in 2005, is all set to begin operations in the second week of August.
Announcing this in Bengaluru today, Karnataka’s Large and Medium Industries Minister KJ George, who is also in charge of Sugar, IT & BT as well as Science and Technology, reviewed the functioning and situation of the factory. He said the State Government has already released Rs 10 crore for repairs of the economiser coil link of the boiler unit of the factory’s cogeneration plant.
He said Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy had held a meeting with senior government officials as well as the management of the company on the revival. As the company needed an immediate investment of Rs 20 crore for its revival, the Chief Minister had directed the Finance Department officials to release the money.
A sum of Rs 10 crore has already been released and the repair work has commenced. It is expected to be completed by the second week of August to enable commencement of the operations, the minister said.
The Mysore Sugar Company Ltd., established by the erstwhile Mysore ruler Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar in 1933, has a capacity of crushing 5,000 metric tonnes of sugarcane annually and also produce 36,000 kilo litres per day molasses besides a cogeneration plant to produce 30MW of power.
The company used to function profitably since the inception till 2002-03 when consecutive droughts in the subsequent three years resulted in huge losses due to non-availability of required quantity of sugarcane. However, media reports claim that the 82-year-old company, once one of the biggest sugar factories in Asia, is said to have incurred a loss of at least Rs 29.4 crore in the last few years alleging corruption. Besides, the company had failed to utilise the state government’s grant of Rs 6.5 crore, sanctioned for setting up a power generation (cogeneration) unit.
The company was declared sick by the Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) in 2005. The state government has released financial assistance of Rs 188.70 crore to the company from 2013-14 till 2017-18.