The NSW sugar industry has seen an unusually late end to the 2024 crush with Harwood Sugar Mill closing out the season yesterday.
The 2024 crushing season in NSW had a buoyant start, with some crops achieving yields as much as 20 percent higher than forecast due to an extended period of exceptionally favourable growing conditions.
This larger crop saw the earlier than planned introduction of 7-day operations at the Broadwater Mill and the addition of some 20 extra cane haul bins as well as some additional vehicles to service the Harwood Mill.
Both the manufacturing and agricultural operations were impacted by intense wet periods that occurred along the NSW north coast through September and November, resulting in significant delays to milling operations and pushing back much of the planting season.
Of NSW’s three sugar mills, the Condong Mill in the Tweed Valley finished on December 13th having crushed just over 402,000 tonnes of sugarcane.
Of this, 22,000 tonnes of food grade Raw and Low GI sugar was produced at Condong, with the balance sent to the company’s refinery for white sugar production.
The Broadwater Mill which ceased crushing on December 20th, having crushed some 520,000 tonnes of sugarcane for the season. The remaining 4,000 tonnes of crop was harvested and transported to Harwood for processing.
In total, the Harwood Sugar Mill, which recently celebrated its 150 years of operation, crushed a total of 588,000 tonnes of sugarcane.
Challenging season
Sunshine Sugar Chief Executive Mr Chris Connors said, ‘Whilst it has been a challenging season on many fronts, I am grateful to the staff, growers, harvesters and transport operators who worked together and persevered to ensure our growers cane was successfully cut and crushed.’
The NSW owned and operated refinery, co-located at Harwood, expects to produce around 215,000 tonnes of white and caster sugar, along with food grade molasses and syrups and with the 22000 tonnes of DC raw and Low GI sugar gives Sunshine Sugar a total of 235,000 tonnes supplied to the domestic sugar market.
These products are exclusively grown, made and sold in Australia to a range of retailers as well as food and beverage manufacturers.
Mr Connors says that strong crop prices are likely to continue into next year for NSW growers off the back of solid domestic sugar pricing.
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