The Australian cane crushing season commenced early June, but was marred by wet weather. The Australian Sugar Milling Council (ASMC) reported on June 13 that there have been disruptions to the start of the season at virtually all mills in Queensland scheduled to be crushing. Wet weather has been a key contributor along with IT and plant commissioning challenges. They had been advised of deferred start dates in the Herbert, South Johnstone and Mulgrave areas while Tully had stopped for several days waiting for better weather conditions. Cane crushed in the first fortnight of the harvest tallied less than 205,000 tonnes. By the end of the third week (June 16) the crush was boosted to 668,000 tonnes; still trailing considerably last season’s tally of 1 mln tonnes cane.
The cane harvest in the Herbert region was due to start one week late on June 25 because of wet fields, while output from the district should be lower this year. Conditions are similar in some other parts of Queensland, while some regions like the Tablelands expect a larger harvest. Mackay Sugar started operations on June 4, with an estimated cane crush of 5.1 mln tonnes. Mackay Sugar announced a staggered start of the mills. Farleigh started on June 4, Marian on June 6 and Racecourse on June 11. The 2019 crop estimate for Mackay is 5 mln tonnes based on an average cane production of approximately 74 tonnes/hectare. For Wilmar Sugar, 2 of their 8 mills started crushing on June 4, with the remainder following shortly after. The group plans to crush 15.4 mln tonnes of cane this year, similar to last year’s 15.44 mln tonnes, as bigger crops in the Burdekin, Proserpine and Plane Creek regions should compensate for the bad weather in Herbert. Sugar output is projected at 2.1 mln tonnes. Further south dry weather has impacted prospects for the Bundaberg region, with the sugarcane harvest likely to be down. The harvest is yet to start in New South Wales. The harvest is thought to be down this season with some growers choosing not to harvest cane this year in response to low prices.
Australia’s 24 sugar mills should process 31.6 mln tonnes of cane, according to the ASMC, down 2.5% (almost 1 mln tonnes) on last year’s 32.5 mln tonnes, because of unfavourable weather during the growing season in some regions. Furthermore, sugar output is expected to fall below last year’s 4.7 mln tonnes. On the basis that the crushing season progresses well over coming weeks – allowing solid harvest progress and good sugar recovery, WKS suggests sugar production should be no lower than 4.5 mln tonnes. Should cane tonnage be higher than presently expected, (several analysts are still indicating as much as 34 mln tonnes), sugar production would come in close to last year’s 4.7 mln tonnes.
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