The race is on to complete a $10 million development program at Tully Sugar before the start of the 2017 cane crush
The ambitious program includes a second turbine to support the cane shredder, a move general manager Barry Dun believes could make the mill home to the world’s most powerful cane shredder.
“Our mill has been running near capacity for some time,” Mr Dun said. “The development is incremental rather than stepped change.
“We are unblocking bottle-necks.”
Mr Dun said the program aimed to reduce the length of the crushing season.
“The last two years we have crushed past Christmas to get these record crops off,” he said.
“That’s high risk in Tully, and we have been remarkably fortunate that weather has allowed us to do that.
“The mill will operate fine in wet weather but mechanical harvesters won’t.”
A key feature of the development program is a $3 million project which will make the world’s most powerful cane shredder.
The shredder smashes the billet cane into fibre so the juice can be squeezed out, and is the first stage of processing.
“Previously had a five megawatt turbine which was driving the shredder but now we are doubling that and we think that will make us the most powerful cane shredder in the world,” Mr Dun said.
“It will improve our ability to extract the sugar by breaking the cane into smaller consistent parts and make everything down stream work better.”
The program also includes $1.6 million to continue an upgrade to the cane bin fleet with the purchase of 100 10 tonne bins, more than $1 million to replace the hopper that receives the cane, $600,000 evaporator station works, $800,000 on the centrafugul and other smaller projects to the value of around $3 million.
Record cane crops from growers in recent years has also translated into the largest ever maintenance program currently underway.
“We have the largest ever maintenance budget ever spend which is aimed at making the mill reliable,” Mr Dun said.
“We have 290 people working here at the moment, the highest workforce we have had for this time of the year.”
While an end of May crush may be ambitious, Mr Dun said it was intended to avoid crushing past Christmas, a situation faced by the mill for the last two years.
He said growers would rather crush cane in “a compromised way” earlier in the year rather than later.
