Mossman sugar mill caught short in the race to cart cane

A lack of drivers is causing headaches in far north Queensland.

Workshop manager David Kennedy has resisted the lure of the resources sector, but many haven’t, leaving Mossman sugar mill short of drivers.

For the first time in its 128-year history, forces aside from the weather have made it unlikely the Mossman sugar mill in far north Queensland will be able to crush all the cane available.

A shortage of truck drivers needed to haul sugarcane from paddocks in Australia’s northernmost sugarcane growing region has led to fears about the mill’s long-term viability.

The Mossman mill, west of Port Douglas, relies on trucks to supply about 300,000 tonnes of cane from the Atherton Tablelands that cannot be loaded on to a dedicated rail network on the coast.

Far Northern Milling chief executive Bronwyn Dwyer said the grower-owned mill, which is the second-largest employer in the Douglas Shire region, had a fleet of 14 trucks, on a three-shift roster, but four sat idle every shift.

The mill itself, which has 150 staff during crushing season, is down 15 workers, mostly tradesmen and shift supervisors, which Ms Dwyer attributed to competition from the resources industry.

Ms Dwyer said it was not uncommon for some cane to go unharvested because of weather issues, but was unaware of a time when up to 20 per cent of the cane was left in paddocks because of ­labour shortages.

“Standover is not a common thing, but it’s generally weather conditions,” she said. “It’s never been labour, but (this year) labour is a major component.”

For David Kennedy, who manages the truck workshop and has been working with the mill’s truck fleet for nine years, a stable job in his local community trumped the enticement of high-paying fly-in, fly-out mining jobs that lured away former colleagues.

To fill the void, the mill is looking for 10 drivers immediately and 30 over the coming months.

The cane harvest, which ­usually runs from June until early December, relies on speed and ­efficiency to get the cane cut, hauled and crushed before the wet season begins. This year, a third consecutive La Nina is likely to compound the labour shortage.

“We will definitely stand cane over on the Tablelands, it’s just a matter of how much,” Ms Dwyer said. “It’s a big hit for us as well as the growers because we’re ­missing out on that throughput. We need throughput to make the mill viable.”

Mossman sugar mill.

It is a cruel irony, given that growing conditions have been favourable and prices are at a buoyant $580 a tonne.

“It’s been a fantastic, growing season, the crop is large, the price is at a record, but we cannot get truck drivers to get it off and the weather is going to be the other thing,” Ms Dwyer said.

Kennedy MP Bob Katter said more foreign workers should be brought in to fill the shortages.

“We have come to the conclusion that if we aren’t able to get a workforce in Australia to do these essential jobs, then we will enter into discussions with government to get migrants in to do the jobs,” Mr Katter said.

“We didn’t want to do that with farming, but we were left no choice and now we have the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme in place.”

The Mossman mill was off­loaded by former owner Mackay Sugar when its other three mills were taken over by German-owned Nordzucker in 2019.

A $55m state and federal package gave growers a lifeline and the mill became the second of Queens­land’s 20 mills to remain in Australian hands.

But there are fears the labour shortages could prove fatal for the mill and the growers who rely on it to crush their cane.

The mill, which crushes 780,000 tonnes of cane a year, generates more than $75m of ­direct input into the economy each year and supports more than 570 full-time-equivalent jobs.

About 100 farmers cropping 13,400ha of land rely on the mill to crush their cane.

“The mill is the linchpin of the Mossman township, and to some extend Port Douglas,” Ms Dwyer said. “If there’s no mill here, there’s no cane.”