The 2022 Harvest has wound up, with Plane Creek and Mackay Sugar milling districts now both crushed out, despite a plan to push hard into January.
No doubt about it, the 2022 Harvest has presented challenges and lessons for growers and millers alike.
While we have been graced with the silver lining of sugar prices maintaining an unprecedented high right across the season, we have battled issues and delays brought about by unseasonal rain during harvest, mill under-performance, and high costs for fuel and fertiliser This all ran counter to what was a bumper crop, and a crop that dramatically increased over winter with the influence of wet weather.
The rain and some warmer temps meant the plants energy was often going into growth and not sugar production: CCS (sugar content) was down throughout the season, with cane quality sharply declining mid-December, as would be expected. Science shows the optimal crush finish time is the second week of November, for sugar content and ratooning of the plant.
It meant that there was a lot of lost opportunity in the 2022 harvest, so it is to be hoped that we learn from these as we move into 2023, because that too looks as though it will be a big crop. There remains quite a bit of standover cane from the 2022 harvest, and the ratoon cane cut early in the harvest is already looking great for 2023.
Plane Creek Mill crushed out for the season in the small hours of Saturday, January 7. Across the 2022 harvest, the mill has processed 1.49 million tonnes, its largest throughput since 1999. The final season CCS was 12.8 units- and that low figure tells the lost opportunity for growers and for millers. Working from crop estimates, there will be over 150,000 tonnes of standover in the Plane Creek mill area.
In Mackay milling district, where crop estimates have leapt by 800,000T to 5.9Mt from initial season estimates of 5.1Mt. As of January 12, there remained a massive 370,000t still in paddock. Crushing ceased at midnight on January 13, following extremely heavy rainfalls across the district damaging the rail network and saturating paddocks, rendering harvesting and supply to mill impossible.
CANEGROWERS Mackay representatives have maintained a strong voice on behalf of growers in meetings with millers, taking arising issues to the highest levels of management.
It is clear that 2022’s climate pattern of winter rain and warmer temperatures had an impact on the way cane crops developed, particularly when talking about timing and growth. There is a clear need to learn from this, and be ready to take full advantage of time available to harvest and process cane whenever we can across the winter months. This requires an industry-wide effort of co-operation – by growers and millers - to see our crops off efficiently and maintain profitability for all parties.
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On the safety front, it has been excellent to see that there were no road incidents related to harvest vehicles over the Christmas Heavy Vehicle Curfew period. CANEGROWERS Mackay ran community safety messaging and ensured relevant harvest contractor members were supported in gaining permits. We thank the community for their understanding, patience and care, and also growers and harvest contractors for their diligence through the busy festive season.
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Finalday of the 2022-23 crush at Racecourse Mill. Picture: Contributed
Duckscalled it on Friday, January 13
