On The Land
24 January, 2023
Sugar season not so sweet for growers
WHILE local sugar cane growers are seeing some of the best prices in history for their cane, rising costs have caught up to their bottom line and left many growers treading water after the 2022 crushing season wrapped up.
The Tableland Mill was able to crush all 559,850 tonnes of sugar cane supplied with an average weekly crush of 5,237 tonnes.
By comparison, the Mossman Mill was unable to completely crush all its cane and roughly 15,000 tonnes were left in the field.
At the end of the season, the mill was able to put 754,361 through the mill while it was plagued with a host of mechanical problems and issues finding truck drivers to haul cane.
Local growers are already gearing up for the 2023 season, set to start in early June and will continue again right up until December.
Tableland Canegrowers chairman Claude San-tucci said despite growers getting some of the best prices for cane in recent history, costs had caught up and shrunk their bottom line.
“We have basically ended up back at square one and just barely making a living for ourselves,” he said.
The price for cane peaked just a few months ago to $680/tonne but has since levelled out to average around the mid-600s.
Claude believes this price will remain the same for the 2023 season but expects costs to continue to rise.
“Our costs have increased substantially particularly fertiliser at $1,800 a tonne and fuel $2.20, they are probably our two greatest costs,” he said.
“At those high prices we are still treading wa-ter and just making a moderate living – back to square one.”
While Tableland Mill growers will be looking at another season reminiscent of their last, Mossman Mill growers can expect a lower price for their cane towards the end of the season due to the crushing running late in 2022.
The perfect time to crush cane is when it reaches between 12 to 14 months of maturity and as the Mossman Mill was still crushing right up until a week before Christmas, the cane due to be processed again during that time will only be roughly 10 months old.
