Sweet Christmas Wishes

By Kevin Borg, Chairman, CANEGROWERS Mackay

With Christmas just a few days away, it seems timely to make a few Christmas wishes for the region’s sugar industry as we head into 2024.

● May four mills run sweetly: it’s been another crush run into overtime. Hopefully, our mills get some serious work done on the mills across the shut-down period- both in terms of capital works and maintenance. And investing in their reliability so that we can run an efficient industry with a whole-of-value-chain reward.

● May we finish the 2024 crushing well before Christmas, giving a great start for the 2025 crop.

● May our sugar terminals - those critical industry assets that keep exports flowing to market - stay in the transparent operating arrangement that the sugar industry designed. If it ain’t broke, it doesn’t need fixing. We would like to see the dispute over STL’s planned insourcing settled, giving the industry a break from upheaval and moving on as a united industry.

● Biofutures: Some great progress has been made towards seeing this established in our region, and it’s to be hoped that this continues. There need to be some nuts-and-bolts discussions on how this will work out for all parties in the supply chain. We look forward to the strong possibility that we will see a shovel in the soil for the region’s first precision fermenter production line, and the real birth of a fledgling new industry for the region that is aligned to cane growing as a renewable source of feedstock. An industry that will bring new kinds of jobs, education and training that align with and upskill on traditional trades and technical services.

● May sugar prices stay high: People get pretty excited about the high sugar price. It’s great, but only if you actually get that price and get all your cane milled into sugar. It’s been an almost unprecedented run on these high prices, and the market experts are expecting it to hold- which means there are some good profits to be made in the self-managed harvest pool by taking the spot price, and forward pricing the 2024 crop. A vibrant cane-growing sector has great economic flow-on for local businesses.

● As an organisation, CANEGROWERS Mackay plans to remain a strong part of this region. We represent around 750 farming families and enterprises, and that’s important. But it’s important that the wider community is part of our heart. We look forward to another year of BEING committed to a part of the fabric of the Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac community and culture, supporting our local people, events and causes, contributing to the regional economy.

And, most important of all, may the people of Mackay region, and particularly our farming, harvesting, milling families and support services who make the sugar industry tick, have a peaceful and safe Christmas, and may we all enjoy a prosperous 2024.