Crush Needs To Gain Momentum

By Kevin Borg, Chairman, CANEGROWERS Mackay
The current harvest season in Mackay and Plane Creek is languishing, and it is costing growers, and the regional economy.
There’s been a few factors at play, but mill performance and industrial action have dogged Plane Creek and brought on an abysmal season start, and in Mackay, the very poor reliability at Marian Mill has unbalanced crush progress across the milling area as a whole.
Added to that mix was the late June rain event of up to 90mm which made paddock conditions very difficult and impacting crushing. It was a boon for our following crop, but impacted crushing start.
It has been reassuring to see Farleigh and Racecourse mill settle into a reasonable crush rate, but with Marian only managing - across seven weeks of crushing combined- less than the volume that the mill should throughput in one week, it’s fair to say that enough is enough. Marian Mill should be the big star in the three-mill organisation, managing in the vicinity of 100,000 tonne per week. It’s like a tripod stool with one leg cut off.
At the time of writing, Mackay Sugar was at around 15% of the way through the area’s estimated 5.2Mt crop. Plane Creek had processed around 10% of a 1.3Mt crop. Realistically, at this time of year and based on an optimal 21-week crush, we should be about 30% of the way through.
Milling performance is integral to growers’ confidence in the industry.
Milling performance is integral to the regional economy and the community that relies on it.
Escalating investment in our region’s mills, maintaining an experienced mill workforce, and building our capacity is critical to maintaining the region’s role as a primary sugar producer.
While respecting that millers are investing in their factories, and that these are aging infrastructure, we urge that the level of investment must be escalated for the benefit of the industry and the regional economies it supports.
We see, in other regions, mills that are capable of operating at 97% availability. We see mills that are able to accommodate processing another region’s crop. This is because of investment and seeing the vision for a strong future for Australian sugarcane across renewable foods fibres and fuels.
A 2019 Queensland Economic Advocacy Solutions study -commissioned by CANEGROWERS - on The economic contribution of the sugarcane industry to Queensland and its regional communities showed that, for every dollar spent on growing sugarcane, that multiplied to $6.42 generated in the Queensland economy.
Growers invest extensively in their operations. We invest in developing practices that build our business and environmental sustainability. We invest in the usual farm inputs and production costs - fuel, fertiliser, workforce, insurances, rates etc. We invest in our soils, our fallow, our crop. We do this, and that forms the base of our industry. We take responsibility for - and invest heavily in - our role in the supply chain. We ask millers to honour not just the growers’ investment, but to honour their own investment in their factories, and to process our crop in an efficient, timely fashion.

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Mills need to be crushing consistently. Photo credit: Kirili Lamb

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