Worthy Park now a 10-farm operation

Sugar producer Worthy Park Estate Limited is projecting output of more than 250,000 tonnes of cane from its own fields and contracted farmers for the 2025 crop year, the fruit of its continuing investments in the new acreage and production.

In just under three years, the three-century-old estate has gone from operating one farm on the lands immediately surrounding the factory to overseeing 10 farms, said CEO Gordon Clarke.

“This means that we are now managing nine satellite farms which are not part of the Worthy Park Valley,” Clarke said.

Since late last year, Worthy Park has “spent $200 million on major upgrades in the sugar factory at the mills, boilers and powerhouse”, he added.

Factory-owned lands under cultivation on Worthy Park land accounts for 65 per cent of total sugar cane deliveries reaped from about 2,100 hectares of land – inclusive of Worthy Park Valley, which accounts for 1,115 hectares, and satellite farms that provide another 1,000 hectares, Clarke said.

Cane is also supplied to the factory by contract farmers, accounting for another 1,400 hectares under production.

Worthy Park is eyeing at least another 200 hectares on the wide-open plains of the former Innswood sugar lands.

Still, Clarke said that with all the additional acreage, the company was making similar amounts of sugar as in past years.

Over the past four years, Worthy Park Estate has spent over $500 million on buildings and purchased and leased properties outside of Worthy Park Valley, in addition to the $200 million spent on upgrades to the factory.

Over time, the company, which also deals in retail sugar packaged under its own brands and that of third parties, has invested in sugar bagging and packaging facilities, expanded sugar storage, and additional acreages under management.

The property purchases include three in the Linstead-Bog Walk area of St Catherine, known as Enfield, Palm and Silver Spring.

Leases include land from Tulloch Estates, near Bog Walk; the former Red Stripe cassava farm from Agro-Investment Corporation; Spring Garden; and the old citrus farms in the Linstead area from the Citrus Growers Association; areas of Lloyds and Belmont, between Guanaboa Vale and Barry; and fallow lands on the west-central St Catherine plains.

“In the last 18 months we have almost tripled the production there, and we have only gone 50 per cent of our planting of the new land. We should triple that amount again in 2025,” Clarke said of the Lloyds-Belmont farm.

He said Worthy Park also secured a long-term lease for a large farm from Charles Gilpin-Hudson about two years ago. Worthy Park intends to plant cane on 350 hectares on that farm, from which it expects to reap up to 25,000 tonnes of cane.

The 2024 crop produced 236,041 tonnes of cane and 23,493 tonnes of sugar, at a tonne cane-tonne sugar, or TC:TS, ratio of 10.05. But Clarke is checking expectations for the 2025 crop, saying, discouraged by cost of labour, other inputs and poor road conditions, some farmers have opted out of sugar cane production.

“We have certainly been affected by periods of drought and then excessive rain, both of which are not ideal for cane growth. However, Worthy Park’s expansion in acreage comes from its dedication to remain viable in what has always been a challenging industry,” Clarke said.

Pinpointing the past decade, he added that the industry was no longer a drain on the Government’s purse, while asserting that the factories and farmers fund most of the operations of the industry regulator, the Sugar Industry Authority.

Worthy Park Chairman Peter McConnell said other steps need to be taken by the Jamaican government to ensure that the sugar industry remains sustainable and doesn’t again become a burden to the public purse.

“The sugar industry is currently self-financed, but the laws governing the industry need to be reformed to ensure that the current success continues. The SIA is far advanced with this effort, but it still needs to be finalised. The goal is to amend the laws to match the current realities in which each manufacturer must find markets for their sugar,” McConnell told the Financial Gleaner as he called for industry self-regulation and financing with balanced representation from farmers and factories.

“We must also strengthen the oversight of the local market and cut out the current smuggling of sugar that is undermining the industry. Sugar is not dead. The future is bright,” McConnell declared.

Clarke said the price for sugar has been much better in the past four years, but small farmers were still reluctant to plant sugar cane in spite of it.

Evidence of this seen in the various farmsteads that normally feed the Worthy Park factory. The narrow roads of Point Hill, Duxes, Lorimer’s, Garden Hill and surrounding districts normally dedicate half the width of the road to neatly stacked bundles of sugar cane waiting for pickup from the Worthy Park contract trucks, but this has not happened since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The 2025 sugar crop has just started and Worthy Park is projecting output of 162,450 tonnes of cane from the 10 farms. Its contracted farmers, which includes Trade Winds Citrus, are expected to produce 87,900 tonnes for supply to Worthy Park’s factory.

The estate is therefore projecting that its factory will be supplied with more than 250,350 tonnes of sugar cane overall during the 2025 crop.

neville.graham@gleanerjm.com