With today’s price of sugar pegged at barely half of the Php 2,600 per 50-kilo bag that it fetched last year, sugar planters in Negros Oriental say this is one of the darkest days of the sugar industry. The increased cost of diesel fuel, wages, spare parts and incoming “zero tariff” for imported sugar upon the full implementation of the Asian Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) by 2015 has planters worried over the doldrums, said to be caused by oversupply and smuggling.
But one sugar planter here manages to keep his head above the water by going into niche marketing.
Lawyer-CPA Alejandro Florian Alcantara has started selling muscovado, also known as “poor man’s sugar,” to Asian and European markets. His company, Raw Brown Sugar Milling Co., Inc., located in barangay Igbalanac, Municipality of Pamplona, has become the third company, out of the 300 muscovado producers in the country today, to penetrate the export market.
Alcantara, a sugar planter for over 15 years, decided in 2007 to build his own sugar mill to save on the 33 and 1/2 percent toll fee charged by other sugar mills in his milling district of Negros Oriental and to protect his investments upon the full implementation of the AFTA by 2015. His interest led him to Engr. Rene Burt Llanto, head of the Department of Science and Technology in Region 7 and to Dr. Nuna Almanzor of the Industrial Technology Development Institute (ITDI), who provided him with the technology.
The 90-ton capacity sugar mill soon started to rise and on August 22, 2009, then DOST Secretary Estrella Albastro gave the key of the muscovado factory to Atty. Alcantara in a simple ceremony in Pamplona, Negros Oriental.
While his company was in its infancy, it participated in the International Food Exhibition (IFEX) Manila sponsored by the Center for International Trade, Exposition and Mission (CITEM) in May 2010.
Subsequently, his company was one of the three food companies in the Philippines chosen among the more than 100 companies who joined the International Food Exhibition (IFEX) at the Asean Japan Center in Tokyo and the Asean Korea Center in Seoul that same year.
On these foreign trips sponsored by the CITEM and the Department of Trade and Industry, he learned that the Philippines’ “poor man’s sugar” is actually a special commodity in developed countries. Unlike refined sugar, which is subject to fluctuating prices in the world market, the price for muscovado has been constant for the last several years.
The contacts he developed on those foreign government-sponsored trips enabled him to start exporting “organic certified” muscovado immediately after his first products rolled off his factory in February 2010. To date, exports to Japan, Korea, Russia and Taiwan account for 90 percent of RBSMC’s production while only 10 percent is distributed locally.
“The government has been a big help to my operation, from the design, the cleaner technology and the marketing, in helping me penetrate the very discriminating markets in Asia,” Alcantara said.
Inspired by the success of a Negros Oriental businessman, the Negros Oriental Chamber of Commerce Inc., the DOST, DTI, and the AFOS Foundation for Entrepreneurial Development Cooperation, a non-profit organization founded by the members of the Federation of Catholic Entrepreneurs of Germany, helped the Raw Brown Sugar Milling Company in preparing for his International Standards Organization 22000 certification – Food Safety Management System (FSMS).
“While it was a rare opportunity for us to join the training of the Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship (AOTS) in Tokyo, Japan, it was made more memorable by my personal experience with the intensity 9 earthquake last March 2011,” Alcantara said.
To make his mill competitive in the global market, the RBSMCI recently completed the draft manual for Hazard Analyzing Critical Control Points (HACCP) seminar and obtained the current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) manual and the Sanitation Standard Operating Practices (SSOP). The HACCP teaches food industries to prevent food contamination within the process flow while the GMP certifies the companies’ observance of hygienic practices in its environment, factory and among its employees.
“The HACCP and the cGMP are important tools to guarantee food safety because buyers usually conduct factory audits and see if we comply with these global standards,” Alcantara said.
To date, Alcantara says the RBSMCI sends one 20-foot container of muscovado each month to each foreign destination. The total production, however, is a figure Alcantara keeps as confidential information.
Success stories like Alcantara’s may yet be the exception to the rule but he and his 40 employees, no doubt, are leading the direction of the sugar industry in the years to come.
