AGM Talks Of Challenging Year

By Kevin Borg, Chairman, CANEGROWERS Mackay

THE CANEGROWERS Mackay AGM is always a time for members to come together and consider the issues that have affected our industry and our organisation across the year.

This year has been no exception, as an organisation we have tackled millers on issues around milling performance across the season. For a third year in a row, we find ourselves harvesting in the aggressive heat of December, with the storm season also developing and challenging in paddock conditions. At this year’s AGM, we exhorted the mills to have the vision and will to have their mills functioning in a highly efficient way for 2024, allowing all sectors to make the best out of the crop. That comes down to maintaining a capable workforce in the long term as well as efficient, functional factories and supply networks.

It has been a year that has seen changes in leadership, with the passing of long-serving CEO Kerry Latter. This led to a re-development of leadership, with the appointment of Grower Services Manager Michelle Martin to the role of District Manager, combining the two positions and bringing it into alignment with other CANEGROWERS districts. Michelle addressed the meeting on this matter and her direction for membership focus and services.

In my address, I also spoke of the issues surrounding our sugar terminals, and quite specifically, Sugar Terminals Ltd continuing to operate outside of its constitution in terms of inactive grower class shareholders, and of the undesirable decision to remove QSL as terminal operator by 2026. I cannot emphasise enough: these terminals are industry assets, and industry and government established QSL as terminal operators. The industry has clearly demonstrated through votes cast at the STL AGM held recently that the industry does not support the STL board’s current direction.

The AGM also engaged with the emerging opportunity that is presented by the biofutures sector. It’s an area that we as an organisation have been actively involved in realising for the regional economy Sugarcane is increasingly seen as a quality renewable feedstock for new technologies in food, fibre and fuels. Our guest speaker was Michele Stansfield, CEO of Australian precision fermentation company Cauldron Molecules. This company is likely to be the first to establish a production line in Mackay, focussing on the fermentation of alternative proteins (milk and egg substitutes) that will help meet the protein needs of a rapidly growing world population.

The company is currently engaged in a feasibility study that could well see upscaling of production here in Mackay over the coming decade.

Michele offers an interesting perspective, in that Cauldron Molecules is interested in community “uplift”, to see benefits flow across the supply chain in the development of an alternate market for our sugar, and for the community in quality jobs, education and training in a regional economy starting to transition from fossil fuel dependency, in the development of great jobs that capitalise and extend on the existing technical prowess of the region.

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Kevin Borg

AGM guest speaker, Michele Stansfield, CEO of Australian precision fermentation company Cauldron Molecules

District Manager Michelle Martin

MCL director Brett Leach, QCGO Chairman Owen Menkens, MCL Director Greg Plath

Bill Hobbs, Herb Robke, MAPS Smartcane BMP officer and grower Lorelle Flynn

Byron and Ross Nicholson with Lachlan McLennan

Reef Catchments CEO Katrina Dent, SRA District Manager Dylan Wedel, retired MCL director Tony Ross