Roxas Holdings Inc. has reduced its losses for its fiscal year ending September 30to P752 million compared to last year’s P939 million.
Pedro Roxas, chairman of the listed sugar milling and bioethanol firm said the company’s efficiency efforts helped to stem the loss despite reduced sugarcane output due to strong typhoons.
Roxas said the company’s pivot to focus on its sugar refinery is proving to be a “just- in-time” project.
“The Batangas area, where RHI’s subsidiary Central Azucarera Don Pedro (CADP) has been operating a sugar mill and sugar refinery, is more susceptible to challenges in the farming sector than the other sugar-producing region of Western Visayas because of more agricultural land conversions and the lack of an established irrigation systems. Thus, the completion of the stand-alone refinery project of CADP in 2022, which removed the refinery business’ dependency on the mill, particularly on the mill-generated fuel bagasse and steam, has allowed the refinery plant to operate for almost ten months — significantly longer than the other sugar refineries in the country,” he said.
“We feel that this will provide RHI’s stakeholders with a viable and more sustainable business, considering the continued strong demand for refined sugar,” he added.
Celso Dimarucut, RHI president, said CADP is looking to refine 5 million 50-kilogram (LKG) bags of sugar next crop year, close to its maximum capacity.
“RHI is set to help the government ensure a sustainable supply of quality refined sugar at reasonable prices, and also decrease our country’s refined sugar importation. We have also been actively partnering with other millers to value-add to their raw sugar output,” Dimarucut said.
RHI’s ethanol unit, San Carlos Bioenergy Inc. (SBCI) continues to reap the advantage of its flexibility in the sourcing of primary raw materials.
“We have recorded substantial improvements in SCBI, with the increase in milling, while still maintaining flexibility in the use of molasses or sugarcane syrup, as opportunities arise,” Dimacurut said.
