The Prime Minister, Dr Navinchandra Ramgoolam, inaugurated on June 18, the first flexi-factory, integrating Mon Trésor And Mon Désert sugar factory and CTSAV power plant, at La Baraque in l'Escalier. The flexi-factory known as Omnicane, will produce refined sugar, electricity for the CEB and biofuel, namely ethanol. On the same occasion, Dr Ramgoolam officially launched the 2009 sugarcane harvest.

Dr Ramgoolam hailed the flexi-factory as an important milestone in the history of the cane industry. He qualified the event as a transition of the cane sector, especially, with regard to the drastic changes that have recently occurred in that sector, as a result of the reform of the EU sugar regime, especially the 36% cut in the price of sugar and the end of the Sugar Protocol in early October this year. He also underlined that his Government is forging a new Public Private Partnership which will bring together all stakeholders in the cane industry.

The Prime Minister qualified this transformation of the cane sector as the reincarnation of sugarcane where sugar becomes a co-product of the industry. He made an appeal to other companies to follow the example of the Mon Trésor And Mon Désert Limited, as the flexi-factory has been set up following the adoption of the Multi-Annual Adaptation Strategy Plan in 2006 with a view to transforming the sector into a diversified, more cost-efficient and competitive sugarcane cluster geared towards the production of raw, white, industrial and special sugars, electricity from bagasse and ethanol from molasses.

Omnicane, which is the sole enterprise in Mauritius equipped with a state-of-art diffuser technology, bears a total investment of around Rs 6.3 billion for the sugar mill, the refinery and the cogeneration power plant. An additional Rs 3.4 billion will be invested in the next three years for forthcoming projects namely the BioEthanol, carbon burnout and the wind energy. The new factory set-up takes into consideration economic, social and environmental aspects, which are the intersecting pillars of an integrated sustainable development.

The factory at La Baraque will process 1.2 million tonnes of cane as well as sixty thousand tonnes of cane syrup from the mill at Union St Aubin. Besides, in season, it will produce one thousand tonnes of Plantation White sugar a day for the refinery, of which only 600 tonnes a day will go to the refinery and the remaining will be processed off season.

As regards CTSAV, the power cogeneration activities will increase its energy efficiency from 55% to 85%. The plant has the single biggest bagasse-coal installation in the world. Bagasse will be used in the crop season and coal when no bagasse is available.

According to the Mauritius Chamber of Agriculture, this year's sugar production is estimated to be around 480 000 tonnes with 4,6 million tonnes of sugarcane to be processed as compared to 452 062 tonnes of sugar and 4,5 million tonnes of sugarcane in 2008. The harvest season is expected to end by mid-December.