Guyana Sugar Corporation
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| Agricultural and Processing | |
| Industry | Sugar |
| Founded | 1976 |
| Headquarters | Skeldon, Guyana |
| Revenue | $200 million + |
| Website | www.guysuco.com |
The Guyana Sugar Corporation, best known by its acronym GuySuCo, is a Guyanese sugar company owned by the government. It is the country's largest cultivator and producer of sugar, a commodity which is responsible for approximately 20% of Guyana's annual revenue and 40% of all agricultural production. They are also notable for selling Demerara Sugar, and also honey and sweeteners.
The company as GuySuCo was formed in 1976, when the government of Guyana nationalised and merged the sugar estates operated by Booker Sugar Estates Limited, Tate and Lyle and Jessels Holdings to form the Guyana Sugar Corporation. One of its noted products is brown sugar produced in the Demerara River basin which is exported internationally to the European Union, the United States of America, and the Caribbean Community(Caricom) countries which include Trinidad, Suriname, St. Lucia, Grenada, Antigua, Dominica, Barbados, St. Vincent and Jamaica.
The rapid nationalization of the sugar industry in the mid-1970s led to severe management difficulties and an emigration of talent.
The Guyana Sugar Corporation, which took over the sugar plantations, initially lacked needed experience and perhaps more importantly, did not have access to the reserves of foreign capital required to maintain sugar plantations and processing mills during economically difficult periods. When production fell, GuySuCo became increasingly dependent on state support to pay the salaries of its 20,000 workers. Second, the industry was hard-hit by labor unrest directed at the government of Guyana. A four-week strike in early 1988 and a seven-week strike in 1989 contributed to the low harvests. Third, plant diseases and adverse weather plagued sugar crops. After disease wiped out much of the sugarcane crop in the early 1980s, farmers switched to a disease-resistant but less productive variety. Extreme weather in the form of both droughts and floods, especially in 1988, also led to smaller harvests.
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