McConnell receives notice to vacate Caymanas sugar lands
Published:Wednesday | June 2, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Mark Titus, Business Reporter
Mere months into the one-year lease agreement they reluctantly accepted from the Government to grow sugar cane on lands at Caymanas property on the edge of the Corporate Area, the operators of the privately owned sugar producer, Worthy Park Estates, have been given notice to vacate the land come crop end June 2011, Wednesday Business has learned.
A source close to the situation said the McConnell family-controlled company will have just about enough time to take off the next crop and turn the land over to the owner, the Urban Develop-ment Corporation (UDC).
Following a hunt for additional lands to increase production, based at its St Catherine property, Worthy Park has been given the green light to utilise several acres of government-owned land at Caymanas. But in May last year, the UDC announced a mega development for the area slated to cost some US$3 billion or more than J$260 billion.
The plan includes a new industrial estate of about 1,000 acres, sporting facilities, as well as some 4,000 new homes in a 400-acre development to be called 'Cay-manas Village'. The project is expected
In August, a memorandum of understanding was inked between the Ministry of Industry, Invest-ment and Commerce and Interna-tional Capital Worldwide for that financing outfit to raise US$2.5 billion to establish the Caymanas Economic Zone for warehousing and light manufacturing.
The Government is banking on the project to create some 30,000 jobs.
Despite being slated for this major development, with Government still seeking to find investors for the ambitious project,Worthy Park was allowed to temporarily cultivate sections of the property.
The McConnells are said to have invested more than $50 million to put the land under cultivation.
Managing director of Worthy Park Sugar Estate, Peter McCon-nell, had expressed his dissatisfaction with the deal from the onset, claiming that the property could only yield 25 per cent of the additional amount of cane he was seeking to produce based on the contracted timeline.
This week, McConnell declined to comment on the latest development. "There is nothing that I would want to discuss at this time," he said.
The UDC's Douglas was not immediately available for comment as she was said to be travelling, and calls to her mobile phone were not returned.
Worthy Park has a capacity of 27,000 tonnes of sugar, and is Jamaica's third largest sugar manufacturer, but the company's owners have repeatedly voiced their peeve that numerous failed attempts to woo successive governments to grant them an additional 5,000 acres of land to grow more cane and boosts economies of scale.
McConnell's attention had initially eyed the Innswood estate, a 3,500-acre property owned by the Government, with 2,500 acres under cane, from which 40,000 tonnes of sugar is produced. He had advanced a proposal to turn out 160,000 tonnes of sugar from that property in five years.
Worthy Park, in the business of bulk rum and sugar, has projected a current crop output of 19,000 tonnes of sugar. It attributes the relatively low harvest to drought and dwindling yield of cane per hectare as a result of seasonal excessive rainfall.