Macadamia bonanza: Overseas demand goes nuts

AUSTRALIA’S only major native crop, the macadamia nut, has hit the big time as rocketing demand from China, Japan and Korea fuels industry expansion, investor excitement and soaring grower profits.

Going nuts: Byron Bay-based Ken Dorey and his five brothers went from being NSW’s biggest canegrowers to one of the macadamia industry’s key farming families. Picture: Luke Marsden

AUSTRALIA’S only major native crop, the macadamia nut, has hit the big time as rocketing demand from China, Japan and Korea fuels industry expansion, investor excitement and soaring grower profits.

With a bumper harvest now ­delivering a record 54,000 tonnes of macadamia nuts in the key growing region from Ballina in northern NSW to Bundaberg in Queensland, the once-boutique industry has swelled from producing less than $100 million of nuts in 2012 to $280m this year.

Macadamia prices of up to $5.50 per kilo of raw nuts — double the prices paid to farmers three years ago — are seeing new investors, including Chinese players, snap up established orchards for as much as $70,000 a hectare.

Many of the original Byron Bay hobby farmers with just a few hectares of rolling macadamia hill ­orchards, who once characterised the fledgling industry, have sold up as a new breed of nut growers and foreign companies buy up plantations and focus on bottom-line profits and improved yields.

Seasoned farmers — including the world’s macadamia king Phil Zadro — are just as busy planting new trees on cheaper coastal sugar­cane country or pioneering growing options around Emerald.

Ken Dorey and his five brothers, who went from being the biggest canegrowers in NSW to one of the macadamia industry’s key farming families in two decades, recently sold 200ha of high-value macadamia trees at Knockrow, north of Ballina, to the Chinese-linked CLHA macadamia joint venture group, trading as CL Macs.

Read more at The Australian