Board members of Mackay Sugar held their first official board meeting in Mossman last Thursday, with CEO Quinton Hildebrand saying the company will look to double production in its newly acquired Mossman Mill over the coming years.

Mr Hilderbrand said this would be the main focus for the group.

"(We want to) get cane supply up. This mill has used to crush 1 million tonnes ten years ago. The estimate this year is 550,000 tonnes. What we need to do is get that capacity back up.

"We've run a number of incentive programs where we offer a fixed price for four years, and there's been a really good uptake by growers on that."

He said work needs to be undertaken on the Mill's boiler which could cost up to $2 million, but will greatly improve the efficiency of the plant.

Mr Hilderbrand praised the efforts of local cane farmer, Doug Rasmussen, who was recently presented the Rural Award at the 2012 Queensland Premier's Sustainability Awards, saying Mr Rasmussen has "set an example" for others to follow.

"I think it's a great compliment to Doug and a great achievement. The measure of that award is around sustainability and his approach to conservation and his approach to technology adoption, and best practice management. He's clearly leading the way on that.

He said the practices employed by Mr Rasmussen during times when the future of Mossman Mill was uncertain, will be followed by others now there is some certainty in the sustainability of the Mill.

In The Newsport article 'Award winning farmer looks to future' (Thursday 14 June, 2012), Mr Rasmussen said the sugar cane industry needed to diversify into other areas such as biofuels to ensure farmers weren't held to ransom by the global sugar price. It's an opinion supported by Mr Hilderbrand.

"I saw that article and wrote a response to Doug...I included a copy of Mackay Sugar's 20 year diversification plan because we share the same view that he does that the Queensland industry has been built on producing sugar, and sugar only. There's a whole lot of untapped potential within the cane plant.

"If you go to a country like Brazil, out of the sugar cane plant half their cane goes to producing ethanol, half to sugar, they've got co-generation, lysine, citric acid. Any mill is not just a sugar mill, it's a co-generation plant with and industrial complex making all these value added products.

"You can be more robust for a downturn in the sugar price."

But it may be some years before Mossman Mill sees a move into other areas of production.
    
"Diversification is very important. Mackay Sugar is undertaking a $120 million co-generation project to be completed this year that will power a third of the Mackay region.

"What you need though is full scale (production). If you did a co-gen here (in Mossman) and you only run for 17 weeks, that's very marginal.

"We need to get up to capacity before we could even dream of diversification here. It would be wrong for me to indicate we would do a diversification project here any time soon.

"But for our overall business, the fact we have got electricity income and other income sources makes us more robust to withstand ups and downs (in the sugar price)."