Cultivation Promoting

KSL Group adheres to the principles "Rich farmer, Glorious factory, Communities like" for over 70 years that we have grown together with sugarcane farmers in Thailand. By seeing that the goal of promoting sugarcane industry in our country is wanting our farmers to have sustainable wealth on the basis of self-management and able to uphold the profession of sugarcane farmers for generations to generations with pride.

Overview of sugarcane business in Thailand

Sugar Cane and Sugar 1984
To protect the advantage of sugarcane farmers in the production and distribution of sugarcane.

Establish and control the production and distribution of sugarcane and sugar. By allowing sugarcane farmers and factory owners who are direct stakeholders to cooperate with the government from sugarcane cultivation to income allocation from sugar sales from both domestically and internationally.

For the sugarcane industry and sugar industry to grow with stability and fair to sugarcane farmers, factory owner and consumers.

Office of the Cane and Sugar Board

Is the secretary department of the committee according to sugarcane and sugar. Act Establish regulatory policy to promote and develop the sugarcane and sugar industry for sustainable and stable growth.

Establish policies to promote research, development and technology transfer of the sugarcane and sugar industry. Create fairness and maintain benefits in the sugar cane and sugar industry system and consumers.

Other benefits received and supervised by the government

Funding through bank from Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC)
Risk free from unstable world sugar prices.

Value-chain management

The group of companies produces sugar from main raw material – sugar cane. The Companies regard cane farmers very important stakeholder. Project iCane consists of four sub-projects. Project iFarm iMap iForm iCash.The project is meant to develop quality and efficiency of promotion for farmers and cane growing by applying information technology innovation to improve the process so as to be able to respond the farmers’ need and to enhance the efficiency of service for the farmers.

iFarm project

iFarm project was aimed to change the large scale sugar-planting method to precision farming in the western region at Bo Ploy, Kanchanaburi. The KLS planting advisory team at Tamaka, Kanchanaburi, so- called KSL Ranger, was assigned to supervise the planting in the area by using appropriate GPS (Guidance and Auto Steering System) technology. The application of appropriate technology and machinery together with sustainable and efficient management helped develop the planting process, maintenance and harvesting. As such, the increase of productivity and decrease of production cost regarding the use of chemicals, labour, burning, soil suppressing, drought, excessive water in the field and obstructed materials in the field.

iForm project

iForm project is an innovation bringing technology to develop the work process of staff by reducing working steps and increasing convenience to farmers.

Previous pattern
1. Use paper forms for farmers
2. Bring papers to process in office
3. 5-14 days for total work process

New pattern
1. Input farmers’ information to tablets
2. Upload information for consideration
3. 2-6 days for total work process

The use of technology makes the work convenient and rapid and reduces unnecessary work process. The farmers can manage their time and receive quick service while the staff can solve problems immediately.

iMap project

iMap project concerns the use of similar technology to iForm but focuses on the management of cane farm information, ranging from planting areas, maintenance, harvesting, logistics, monitoring as well as anticipation the time to harvest. It helps manage the cane farms more effectively by reducing the waiting time to load sugar cane at the mills. The sugar cane is thus of better quality. Apart from the above-mentioned, the group has renders organic cane project and CCS project.

Sustainable Sugar Cane Planting Project

Sustainable Sugar Cane Planting Project was aimed at changing to organic sugarcane by using organic fertilizer in the planting field to harvest 100% natural sugar cane. The period of the project would last three years. The use of organic fertilizer helped reduced production cost and top soil loss. The pilot project was done at Bo Ploy, Kanchanaburi. The participating farmers would get advice from the technical term of KSL throughout the project.

CCS Study Project

This project was to experiment the increase of CCS, the indicator of sweetness, in sugar cane. The original experiment was a cooperation with a Yamaha company, which had experimented the spraying of sweetness accelerating matter since 2018. In 2019, Kacha Agricultural Chemicals joined the project to further explore the experiment of the matter and weed abolition.

KSL Junior Farmer – new generation of sugar cane farmers

KSL Junior Farmer – new generation of sugar cane farmers
The project had an objective to deliver sugar cane planting business to the next generation. The Company developed a curriculum “New Gen of Farmers” with the main purpose to have the trainees use the knowledge to apply to their parents’ farming with the hope that these new generation would succeed the business and supply sugar cane to KSL as their alliance. Another purpose was to create good relationship between the farmers and the factories and to share knowledge regarding the sugar cane planting and other relevant matters in each region.

The project is focused at the new farmers who are interested in sugar cane business and wish to sustain their business for their future and to maintain the occupation with stability and sustainability.

The activities for the new farmers is held at KSL River Kwai Park and Resort. The topics to be discussed includes 1) the knowledge in sugar cane business emphasizing on the analysis for investment 2) the increase of productivity by modern farm management and appropriate application of technology and 3) the applied Sufficiency Economy in business.

Fertilizer embedding Equipment in the Sugar Cane Filed Project

KSL Material Supplies Co., Ltd., which normally provided organic fertilizer to cane farmers, had developed an innovative fertilizer embedding equipment so as to solve the problem of ineffective equipment. Two types of equipment were developed to serve this purpose.

1. Mini-Combine was an equipment to prepare the soil for fertilizer embedding. This equipment helped embed fertilizer for more effectiveness and reduce the steps of soil preparation by farmers.

2. Fertilizer embedding equipment with twin tanks and boom spray to separate organic fertilizer from chemical fertilizer, which solved the breakdown flow of fertilizer feeding. The use of such equipment helped reduce work burden for farmers.

KSL SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY APPLICATION

The European Union has been developing the Sentinels, the satellite technology to acquire optical imagery for natural resource survey. This project supports to member countries, developers, researchers, and scientists worldwide a broad range of services and applications, including natural resource monitoring over land and atmosphere, and application to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (http://esa-sen4cap.org/). This potential has inspired us since 2019 to study and develop the processing system of the data collected by Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2.

The study found that the data collected by Sentinel-2 at high spatial resolution (10x10 m) can be processed to the vegetation index for monitoring canes planted in the field under contracts to indicate their planting time, growth, and quantity.

From the study and development of processing system in 2019-2020 crushing season, the data was applied to the factory performance in the harvest monitoring report and to accurate quantity forecast. In 2020-2021 crushing season, the monthly data was processed to monitor the cane growth and quantity in the fields of 5 factories. The potential assessment system was tested and developed for the cane fields surrounding the factories (outsourced fields) to enhance the cane monitoring in order to support the farmers in the future.

KMS WEB Project

KMS WEB is the collaboration among the sugar factories, KSL Material Supplies Company Limited (KMS) (Head Office) and suppliers with the objectives to monitor the delivery and billing between the suppliers and KMS, reduce daily process and errors, and simplify the verification. This project improves the product publication to create higher sale volume.

KMS WEB has been implemented to reduce daily process as follows:

ORIGINAL PROCESS

1.Administration Department of each sugar factory gathers the orders placed by farmer weekly.

2.Administration Department summarizes the order (organic fertilizer, chemical fertilizer, chemical product) in Excel file and emails it to KMS.

3.KMS prepares the order for each supplier in Excel file and emails it.

4.The supplier receives the email from KMS and delivers the order.

5.After delivery, the supplier uploads the delivery bill through Line for verification by KMS who enters the data into SAP software for Accounting Department to proceed the billing to the sugar factory.

6.After uploading the document through Line, the supplier mails the original copy to KMS for billing.

KMS WEB PROCESS

1.Each factory has their own account or username. Once an order from a farmer is placed, a staff will log in to the account to fill in the order form.

2.Administration Department or an authorized personnel approves the order in the system and forwards it to KMS.

3.KMS receives the order from KMS WEB (with auto-reply email or notification email to KMS) and reapproves to forward the order to the suppliers.

*KMS WEB automatically separates the order for each supplier.

4.KMS verifies the order in KMS WEB (with auto-reply email or notification email to the supplier) and delivers the order.

5.After delivery, the delivery personnel uploads the relevant document to KMS WEB.

6.KMS downloads the documents for billing process.