Petropar will begin sending some of the sugarcane grown by registered producers in Mauricio José Troche to the private mill Neualco S.A. for processing in the first days of October. Under the agreement, farmers will receive the same price for their production as the one set by the state-owned company.
The arrangement was made through a public tender to process some of the registered crop. Petropar President William Wilka said the contract would help the state-owned company meet its grinding and absolute-alcohol production targets for the 2026 harvest, which began on May 19.
The measure also responds to public demands from growers, who had called for cane to be sent to private mills because of limits on processing the entire supply at the Troche facility. Petropar says the plant is operating normally; sugarcane growers’ representatives say its current capacity still restricts how much of the crop it can receive.
Neualco President Carlos Morínigo said the aim is to avoid having hectares of sugarcane left unprocessed at the end of the harvest. The first deliveries will be coordinated between the two mills. The growers’ association expects transport to the private mill to add costs: its president, Cristian Fonseca, said the distance is about 100 kilometers, farther than the trip made by those delivering their raw material to Troche.
The Petropar facility had already ground more than 300,000 tonnes this harvest. The state-owned company’s president called criticism of the plant’s capacity a “poor assessment” and said cumulative grinding had reached that volume by a Thursday, without specifying the date. Wilka reported an average yield of 63 liters of alcohol per tonne of sugarcane; another publication gave cumulative production of 16.735 million liters, without specifying a cutoff date for that figure.
Fonseca said the old grinding system processes about 2,800 tonnes a day, operating continuously, up from 1,800 to 2,000 tonnes a day in previous harvests. The association expects the campaign to end with at least 400,000 tonnes processed. Petropar has 1,677 registered producers, about 80% of them small and medium-sized, Wilka said.
Expanding capacity remains on hold: construction of a new grinding system has been suspended amid a contractual dispute and an injunction preventing the process from moving forward. Wilka said the state-owned company is considering alternatives while it awaits progress in the court proceedings.