Universal Robina Corp. (URC) is keen on pursuing investments helping raise the output and efficiency of its SONEDCO sugar mill in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental.
“We will continue to invest a lot of energy and funds in ensuring that our partner farmers attain the highest productivity and highest income they can generate from their farms. We will likewise ensure that our mills are as efficient and as productive as they can be while investing in facilities for value-added services, such as sugar refineries, bio-mass energy production and bio-ethanol and carbon dioxide production,” said Lance Gokongwei, URC chairman, in a statement.
URC president and chief executive officer Irwin Lee also said the goal is to further expand the mill’s capacity from 12,000 tons to 14,000 tons daily.
SONEDCO began expanding in the mid-1990s, raising its capacity from 4,000 to 8,000 tons of sugar cane per day and further raised to the current 12,000 tons per day.
URC said the sugar mill’s expansion, using Japanese, Thai and Indian technologies, stretched plant production to 15,000 bags of refined sugar daily.
The sugar mill also recently began producing its own power from its biomass-fired cogeneration plant providing 19 megawatts to the national grid using bagasse, a byproduct of sugar milling, as fuel.
URC acquired SONEDCO in 1989 then known as the Southern Negros Development Corp.
