Crushing season picks up the pace

SUGAR cane mills across the Far North have battled wet weather, loco derailments and breakdowns making for an eventful start to the 2018 crushing season.

But Mulgrave Mill manager Chris Hoare is confident it will be a successful year.

MSF Sugar’s Mulgrave, South Johnstone and Tablelands mills have crushed an average of about 33 per cent of their crop for the 2018 season, which is on track for this time of year.

Mr Hoare said there was good quality cane going through the mills and recent cold weather had provided some welcome benefits.

“We’ve had a little bit of a cold snap, which is good for the CCS … it’s higher than we anticipated,” he said.

While that was good for growers, Mr Hoare said it had not been all smooth sailing at the mills with Mulgrave Mill being plagued with interruptions early on in the season.

“Mulgrave Mill has had a fairly lumpy start to the season, we’ve had some mechanical problems so our performance has been down on previous years,” he said.

“We’ve also had some problems on maintenance on bridges, so that causes cane supply problems, problems getting cane to the factory. But hopefully we’re over the worst of it.”

Mr Hoare said the mill was crushing at a reduced rate and had also lost six days due to wet weather earlier in the season.

But it’s the South Johnstone Mill that has been impacted the most time due to rain, losing 19 days of production so far this season.

Mr Hoare said as a result, crop yield was down about 8 per cent.

But on the flip side, the mill had already crushed almost 35 per cent through their 2018 crop, about 5 per cent more than at the same time last year.

“The mill has also had a couple of mechanical problems, but they weren’t that major,” he said.

“We’ve had two major loco derailments at South Johnstone … no one was injured thankfully.”

Up at the Tablelands Mill, Mr Hoare said the harvest was on track.

He said the mill had experienced some minor delays due to bagasse chokes, but was now crushing at a higher rate than previous years.

The mill has crushed almost 35 per cent of their overall crop so far.