( L - R ) Hill, McConnell

An Italian sugar company, Eridania Sadam, wants to buy Jamaica's Frome sugar factory - a facility that was once in the portfolio of the United Kingdom-based Tate and Lyle, with which Eridania has a partnership for the marketing of sugar in Italy.

Eridania Sadam, a public but unquoted company, is among the four entities shortlisted as preferred bidders for sugar assets put up for sale by the Jamaican Government. It was, however, not immediately clear whether Tate and Lyle was party to the Italian group's acquisition efforts.

"We don't have bidders at this point, what we have are proposals," claimed Aubyn Hill, the banker who heads a team negotiating on behalf of the Jamaican Government.

"But, as a negotiator, I don't speak to the press until the negotiations are done," Hill said. "It's a policy that I follow."

Up to the 1960s, Tate and Lyle controlled large chunks of Jamaica's sugar industry but left in the 1970s. They came back for a period in the 1980s to manage some factories on behalf of the Government, and in the 1990s as partners with two Jamaican firms in a short-lived ownership of the divested industry.

Second attempt

This is the second attempt in less than six months by the Jamaican government to offload its loss-making Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ) - including five factories and thousands of hectares the state reacquired in the aftermath of the financial debacle in the second half of the '90s.

The previous effort collapsed in December when Infinity BioEnergy, the Brazilian-based ethanol producer controlled largely by a US private investment fund, couldn't muster the US$125 million for the purchase of the SCJ. Infinity's failure was despite the deal being sweetened by throwing in Petrojan Ethanol Limited, a profitable, 40-million- gallon-a-year ethanol refinery owned by the state oil company.

This time, rather than offering the SCJ as a single entity, the Government invited bids for varied combinations of factories or estates.

Expressions of interest

It initially received expressions of interest from 14 groups, which have now been narrowed down to what one senior official called a "priority list" of four.

Among them is the American bio-energy company Energen, as well as a consortium of the Jamaican agricultural property owners and managers, Fred M. Jones, and the publicly listed agro-processors, Seprod Group. The fourth shortlisted bidder is a consortium of US interests, whose names could not be immediately ascertained.

Surprisingly, the McConnell family-owned Worthy Park Estates, whose Worthy Park factory is probably the island's most efficient, didn't make the cut.

The group's head, Peter McConnell, had publicly said that acquisition of an additional 5,000 acres of land from the nearby Innswood estate was important to the long-term viability of his operation.

mark.titus@gleanerjm.com

Peter McConnell, managing director of Worthy Park Estates, watches as sugar cane is reaped. - File