Athani Sugars Limited

Out here at Athani Sugars Limited, things get really busy once the harvest starts. We are located right on the Anna Nagar Miraj Bijapur Highway, and during the peak season, the line of tractors carrying sugarcane stretches out for miles. You can smell the molasses in the air from a long way off. It’s a thick, sweet scent that stays on your clothes long after you go home. The factory itself is a massive place with pipes and boilers everywhere. It’s loud and it’s always hot, no matter what time of year it is. We spend our days making sure the crushing machines are running and the juice is being processed like it should. There is a lot of dust from the dried cane, and the floors get a bit sticky sometimes. It’s not the kind of job where you stay clean. We have workers coming in from all the nearby villages, so there is always a lot of chatter during the lunch breaks under the shade of the trees. The highway is always buzzing with trucks, which makes the whole place feel like it’s constantly moving. We just focus on getting through the day’s load and keeping the machinery from breaking down. It’s a lot of manual labor and watching the gauges, but it’s what keeps this whole area going. The highway location means we are never truly isolated from the rest of the world out here.