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By HARRY CLARKE | EXCLUSIVE
FUTURE prospects for Mossman’s beleaguered sugar industry have turned from dire to promising at the eleventh hour, as creditors today voted overwhelmingly to engage with a renewable energy company proposing a $26 million investment to revive the district’s vital milling facility.
At a meeting which anxious stakeholders feared would result in the mill’s operator, Daintree Bio Precinct, being liquidated, a Newcastle-based renewables company offered a solution to back milling operations for four years while it builds a bioenergy manufacturing plant to sustain operations long term.
The Caller has been asked temporarily not to name the company. The Caller has approached the company for comment.
Creditors of Daintree Bio Precinct were informed by its administrators today that the company believes it can establish a profitable biofuel venture that would save Mossman’s 560-worker sugar industry.
Fifth generation Mossman cane grower and Australian Cane Farmers Association spokesman Jack Murday (pictured) said the outcome of the creditors meeting was a major relief for farmers.
“It’s been such a roller coast of emotions. There’s still a bit to go, so we don’t want to celebrate too early, but we’re feeling a lot better than were we were this morning when it looked like liquidation was the only option,” Murday said.
“We’re still short on some of the details but the administrator put up the proposal and creditors voted it through.
“It will now go to a shareholder vote and then creditors will have to sign off on the final terms of the agreement.
“(The renewables company) is proposing significant investment over the next for years and their objective is to bring region’s cane production right up to make the mill viable in the short term.
“The second stage is value adding with gas into bio energies.”
Since 2019 there have been various proposals to convert the Mossman sugar mill into a producer of renewable biofuel, an energy source created using waste products from milled sugar cane.
A separate company, Helmont Energy, is another renewables producer which has designs on generating bioenergy at Mossman, provided the company can reach an energy offtake agreement with the Queensland Government.
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The Caller reported earlier this week how there were grave fears for Mossman’s economic survival if its sugar industry, which employs 20 percent of the district’s workforce, were to come to an end.
The Queensland Government yesterday announced a $12 million “care” package aimed at attracting a viable buyer to take the mill over. Premier Stephen Miles and ministers had been in Cairns for a cabinet meeting when they were met by protestors asking for support.
Should a private investment offer be unsuccessful, Miles said the $12 million would instead be used to help the Mossman workforce transition away from the sugar industry.
Murday said the last minute government and private funding would give the Mossman community and it’s 130-year-old sugar industry hope for the future.
“The issue has been over the past few years, when the mill was going on a year-to-year basis, that the growers have had no confidence, so we’ve struggled to justify making the investment in our crops with that uncertainty.
“That has in turn affected the mill’s production and its bottom line, which has made it less viable. It’s been a bit of a downward spiral.
“The injection of funds and a vision toward the future is great for growers’ sentiment, and the whole Mossman community.”