Coast sugar cane industry looks sweet

Troy Apps is looking forward to planting his first sugar cane crop in years as news emerges the BioCane cow candy project will open in early 2008. Photo: Warren Lynam/178389

If you’ve got the land, plant cane.

That’s the confident message coming from an industry that has seen no real income for the past five years.

After years of uncertainty about the prospects of a cattle feed industry to replace sugar which had been our staple rural industry for more than a century, a BioCane plant is set to open outside Nambour early in the new year.

The magic number that has got everyone excited is 42 – the top end of the dollar price range that will be paid a tonne for the crop.

That compares with the $20 a tonne farmers were getting when the Moreton Sugar Mill closed and represents a real return for the investment and hard work.

Across the Sunshine Coast about 60 growers have started preparing their paddocks to replant after years of scratching an income off-farm and, as Cootharaba grower Tom Kennedy said yesterday, “chewing into the super”.

Growers like Kennedy and Dunethin Rock’s Troy Apps have backed the biocane project which will sell “cow candy” to south east Asian feedlots, plunging their dwindling fortunes into quota shares in the company.

They are also part of a growers’ co-operative that has designed and commissioned a unique harvester, a world first, that will cut the cane finely before transfer to the factory on Cooney Road where it will be dried and processed for export.

“We’re back in the tractors getting the ground ready to plant,’’ Kennedy said.

“I’ve got an excavator and dozer and have been doing contracting work and chewing into the super to get by. There’s potentially 1000 acres to be planted on the Coast but we’re starved for plant seed.”

Growers will plant from now through to the middle of October, receiving incentives from the BioCane company to do so.

Apps has started to plant upward of 100 acres and says he has absolute confidence in the future of the cow candy project.

“I would encourage anyone who has bought, or who has cane land to contact the factory and start growing,’’ he said.

“There’s a few still sitting on the fence waiting to see what happens. They’ve been told for a long time it was going to happen so there is still a little bit of trepidation.

“But the factory will be up and running by Christmas or early next year. Nearly everyone’s money’s already spent after five or six years of little income so we’re going to have to start small and build up.

“That’s not necessarily good for the factory which is going to need as much cane as it can get.”

Biocane chairman Scott Brimley said incentives would be offered to help growers plant cane.

“We’ll make smut-free varieties available and help finance planting,’’ Mr Brimley said.

“It’s been exceedingly frustrating. The only thing that’s stopped us being a long way ahead of where we are now is money.’’

The buyout of a 37.5% stake in the company by Chinese consortium the Yunan YinMore Sugar Company Ltd has brought a $3 million capital injection of which $2 million has already been received.

The workforce that was laid off due to delays in the receipt of $1.3 million in federal government funding has been re-hired and final pre-fabrication of the factory is now happening.

A 200 tonne crane will be onsite within two weeks to begin to fit it all together.

Mr Brimley said the market had retained its patience and considerable interest in the product.

Sunshine Coast councillor Debbie Blumel said she was confident the government would restore grant money in the near future.

Ms Blumel said an audit two weeks before the federal election last year, conducted against a set of criteria not in place when the grant was approved had been unfair but had tied the new government’s hands.

However a fresh audit two weeks ago which she had lobbied the federal government to conduct would give the fairest chance for the project to be explained in full light.

“It was about restoring fairness,’’ Ms Blumel said.

“The project was never given a fair go. Somewhere along the line a decision was made that a cane industry was not what we needed.’’

dource:thedaily