Lynne Wong's PhD thesis

number of 255, and cane land covered 46 025 hectares, producing 125 002 tonnes of sugar
(Anon., 1858).
The industry continues to evolve. In 1953, the annual sugar production amounted to
512 000 tonnes produced by 27 factories (Anon., 1997). A record production of 718 362
tonnes sugar was achieved in 1973 by 21 factories (d’Espaignet, 1974; Wong Sak Hoi,
2003). Today, the production is 504 653 tonnes in 2006 (Anon., 2007), and centralization
of sugar factories has reduced their number to ten (see Fig 1.1). Mauritius has no option
but to pursue the centralization of sugar factories in order to improve the efficiency of the
industry, and to modernize the remaining factories so as to reduce the costs of sugar
production.
Since 1920, Mauritian sugar factories have produced electricity from bagasse, a by-product
of the sugar industry. At first this was for their own demand, but since 1957, they have
also been supplying to the national grid (Kong Win Chang et al., 2001). By 2004, they
contributed to about 22% of the primary energy supply, and about 55% of the electricity
sold by the grid (Central Electricity Board) was generated by sugar factories from bagasse
(302 000 MWh) and from coal (835 000 MWh).
Since the 1970s, the Mauritian economy has diversified from a sugar cane mono-crop
economy based on sugar, to manufacturing (mainly textiles and garments) as well as
tourism in the 1980s, while still relying heavily on sugar. More recently, it has started
developing financial services as the fourth pillar of the economy.
Because of the threats facing the Mauritian sugar industry, namely, the erosion of
preferential access on its traditional export markets for sugar, and the challenges imposed
by trade liberalisation, the Government decided that a sugar sector strategic plan for the
period 2001-2005 be elaborated.
The plan (Anon., 2001a) implied more centralisation, cost reduction, enhanced productivity,
manpower rightsizing, an optimal use of cane sugar resources, well-planned diversification
activities, improvement of value added products and the creation of new opportunities.
Among the targets cited are: on the field side, the preparation of a substantial proportion of
land that can be totally mechanised and the supply of irrigation water to land requiring
irrigation, among others. On the factory side, the reduction of sugar factories from 14 to 7
or 8, the reduction of the cost of sugar production from 18 US cents/lb to 14 US cents/lb
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