Cheques should soon be in the mail for Manitoba sugar beet growers awaiting final payment for their 1996 crop.
A deal was reached last week that means another $2 per tonne for the growers, said Gilbert Fontaine, secretary-treasurer of the Manitoba Sugar Beet Producers Association. He hopes Rogers Sugar will issue the cheques later this month.
Manitoba growers normally received their final payment within 14 months of harvesting their crop. However, hurdles delayed the payment for beets grown in 1996.
Sales delays
The buyer, Rogers Sugar, closed its Winnipeg plant in early 1997. Traditionally, much of the sugar from that plant was sold in bulk to American soft drink bottlers. But following the plant’s closure, a greater amount of sugar was packed into bags ranging from two to 10 kilograms, said Fontaine.
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The company did not finish selling those packages until last fall. According to their contract with Rogers Sugar, the growers would not receive final payment until the last of the sugar extracted from their crop was sold.
Payment coming
This latest payment means that Manitoba’s sugar beet growers will get about $44 per tonne for their 1996 crop. That’s “pretty good,” said Fontaine, when compared to prices from years before that.
“I guess you have to take what the market will bear. The downside is we don’t have a (sugar beet) industry in Manitoba.”
Rogers Sugar could not be reached for comment.
Manitoba sugar beet growers seeded 22,500 acres to the crop in 1996. The crop yielded 358,000 tonnes of beets, said Fontaine.
According to their contract, the growers shared in the cost of packaging and transporting the sugar. There was some disagreement in the past couple of months over how much of that cost should be passed on to growers. That was among the issues that had to be resolved before payment could be made.
A final audit of the sale of sugar from the 1996 crop has yet to be completed on behalf of the growers association. Fontaine expects another 25 cents a tonne will be paid to growers once that audit is finished.
“It wasn’t always roses working with Rogers, but their cheques never bounced,” said Fontaine, reflecting on the company’s departure from processing white sugar in Manitoba.
Rogers Sugar continues to process beets at its Taber plant in Alberta. The plant underwent an expansion to handle 6,000 tonnes of beets a day.
In light of that expansion, Alberta growers are expected to boost their plantings from about 40,000 acres in 1998 to more than 50,000 this year.
