Sugarcane Operations

The sugarcane operations department is involved in identification of potential farmers, contracting, organising credit facilities, infrastructure development, harvesting, labour management and supply logistics. Sugarcane procurement is a systematic and well-organised program led a team of professional head of operations in all units and monitored by a dedicated team of 40 agricultural cane officers and over 150 cane assistants at the field level.

From the first factory at Aundipatti during inception in 1990-91, only 9725 acres was under cane cultivation with a crushing of 2.65 lakh tonnes of cane and the cane cultivation grew exponentially within a short span of 8 years and in 1998-99, 23800 acres was brought under cane cultivation and 8.40 lakhs tonnes of cane was crushed. Today in all the four factories put together cane cultivation has been nurtured to over one lakh acres and a total cane production of 32 lakh tonnes through carefully crafted integration of horizontal and vertical cane development process.

Farmers crops are insured by the company against risk of destruction by vagrancies of nature .Village roads are developed by company or in association with farmers of the locality for ease of transportation of cane , which indirectly and ultimately benefits the people of the region. In the areas bounding the factoriess ,it is matter of pride to exude that there are almost no villages without road, water and electricity generation and the company has played a significant role in enabling this transformation through Sugarcane Development Fund loans etc,.

The company has implemented an automated program linked to its comprehensive crop management system database on SAP platform ,which sends information to the individual farmer through SMS (Short Message Service) on his cane harvesting date, cane supply details and payment credit to his bank account. The farmer therefore has no necessity to visit the sugar factory in his anxiety to follow up on harvest, transport and payment for his cane.

For the sustenance of the farmer, it is imperative that farmer related and dependent human resources like cane harvesters and transporters etc.,.are also effectively taken care by the company through CSR activities. In this context, many development initiatives are taken by the company towards cane harvesting labour welfare.

The majority of the sugarcane harvest labour are from the local villages within the cane command area of the factories. The company transacts money for harvesting labour cost , which finds its inroads into the live hood of the surrounding rural populace and is the mainstay for sustenance of the rural village economy in the command area of factories.