Corporate giant Victorias Milling Company appears willing to lose hundreds of millions of pesos by extending additional milling incentives to attract individual planters to deliver their sugarcane to VMC for crop year 2021-2022, a press release from Vicmico Planters Association said
Industry sources indicated the VMC, fearing reduced volume after unilaterally severing ties early this year with long-time business partner Vicmico Planters Association, Inc. and consequently, with Vicmico Planters’ Multi-Purpose Cooperative, is giving milling incentive of as much as P300, or a total package of P550 per ton cane, to attract farmers to deliver their sugarcane to the mill.
Aurelio Valderrama, Jr., Vicmico Planters’ Association, Inc. president, said VMC is desperate to secure substantial cane supply as it cannot assure itself of needed volume when it ended its decades-long partnership with the association after questions on transparency, mill efficiency and unreasonable penalties were raised by the planters’ group.
The association was held hostage to the whims of some officers and directors further sowing confusion and division among its planters/farmers and in an attempt to shut down the association and ultimately the cooperative, Valderrama said.
Such moves, he added, are part of the under-handed tactics to make Vicmico Planters Association Inc. and Vicmico Planters MPC irrelevant just because they speak their minds out about the mill’s practices.
The VMC’s new “package” to planters, which took effect on November 8, includes milling incentives and other benefits per ton cane delivered direct to the mill from Victorias, Manapla and Cadiz area, an incentive that is way above the usual trucking packages offered by other sugar mills, Valderrama said.
Normally, he continued, the trucking package is determined based on the distance of the farm to the mill.
The VMC is currently giving a higher trucking package because last year it only offered P250 per ton, he added.
Valderrama disclosed that VMC keeps increasing its trucking packages after noting a decline in its current tonnage versus the year-ago level.
The mill was averaging 84,180.90 weekly gross tonnage during crop year 2020-21 and now down to only 71,260.4 tons per week with lower sugar recovered per ton of cane (lkg/tc) compared to other mills, sources said.
As a result, VMC increased the total trucking allowance package from P250 per ton last year to P300 week-ending August 29 to September 19; hiked it again to P400 week-ending September 26 to October 3; P450 for week-ending October 10, 2021 and currently at P550 just to assure itself of steady cane supply.*
