The 2021 cane crushing season is just around the corner and the Far Northern Milling company is in the final stages of preparation for another busy season.
Annual maintenance has been completed and on Thursday 3 June, the Mossman Mill will fire up the main boilers to conduct steaming trials in anticipation of a June 15 start to the 2021 season.
In addition to the usual annual maintenance, the Mill used the off-season to do significant work on the cooling towers. The period was also used to install a new controller system for the “pan stage” of the milling process. The new equipment will deliver computer controlled automation to the operation.
This year’s abundant crop handled the heavy rains in April well and has not been adversely affected by the light rains during the last two weeks. Total tonnage forecast to be crushed at the Mossman in 2021 is 685K tonnes, which is about 40 k tonnes more than was crushed in 2020. An additional 100K tonnes are forecast to be toll crushed for FNMilling Pty Ltd on the Tablelands.
A rally in world sugar prices augurs well for the local sugar industry in 2021.
Barring any major weather events or technical issues, the 2021 crush is expected to be completed in mid to late October.
In another development, CoconutZ Australia, the first tenant of the planned Daintree Bio Precinct, is expected to have a demonstration plant up and running by late October or early November.
CocoNutZ has developed a bio process to convert cane sugar into a juice that will replace the more expensive coconut sugar as an essential ingredient in Kecap Manis, a staple in Indonesian cuisine.
The CocoNutZ food facility will have the capacity to process 20K tonnes of cane in the first year of operation, according to CocoNutZ managing director Lucas Van Der Walt.
