At 137 lakh tonnes, Maharashtra sees its all-time high sugar production

Maharashtra has set a record for itself by producing 137.28 lakh tonnes of sugar in 2021-22, which is nearly 31 lakh tonnes more than the previous year, a senior official said on Thursday.

The state also broke another record of crushing 1,320.31 lakh tonnes of sugarcane this year, he said.

"The state has produced 137.28 lakh tonnes of sugar this year, which is 30.88 lakh tonnes more than the previous year. With this, the crushing season in the state has now ended," state Sugar Commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad told PTI.

The sugar produced in Maharashtra this year is so much that it stands next to Brazil in terms of the production, he said.

"The crushing season of Maharashtra lasted longer this year after an all-time high production of sugarcane. The sugarcane crushing season which used to be around 90-120 days, went up to 240 days in some parts of the state this year. The average crushing season went up to 173 days, which was 140 the previous year," he said.

This year, around 200 sugar mills were involved in crushing sugarcane across the state. With the crushing capacity of 8 lakh tonnes a day, these mills crushed 1,320.31 lakh tonnes of sugarcane this year. Last year, this figure stood at 1,013.64 lakh tonnes. So this year, the mills crushed nearly 306.67 lakh tonnes more sugarcane than the previous year, Gaikwad said.

The total sugar production of the state last year (2020-21) was 106.40 lakh tonnes. This year nine additional sugar mills (total 199) were involved in the process vis-a-vis 190 the previous year, the top official said.

The region-wise sugar production of the state (in lakh tonnes) this year is as follows: Kolhapur 30.04, Pune 29.12, Solapur 28.43, Ahmednagar 20.07, Aurangabad 12.92, Nanded 15.32, Amravati 0.96, Nagpur 0.38.