Anxious wait on Mossman Mill bid news
The Last Harvest
Canegrowers in the Douglas Shire are keenly awaiting news if there has been a successful bidder for the Mossman Mill site, with local representative Evelyn Matthews saying industry leaders had met with a number of prospective buyers at the site over the course of the Expressions of Interest process which concluded on May 6.
“While everyone is really busy and ready for the crush, my board are pretty swamped with organising that and looking ahead to what is next,” Ms Matthews said.
“We were meant to hear back from the final bids around May 6 but we’ve had no feedback about final bids.
“There was certainly some interest in it. We met with some of them before those final bids,'' Ms Matthews said.
While CANEGROWERS has facilitated local workshops on transitioning cane fields to cattle production and has a coffee day coming up, there are a range of alternative crops and primary production options being considered and trialled across the region.
Corn is being grown in Mossman under a Department of Primary Industries trial for maize, and it will “find a home” despite being a trial.
Also on the radar are fibre crops like hemp, forage sorghum and bana grass.
“Some of those people we have met at the mill are interested in fibre crops for processing there,’’ Ms Matthews said.
In what is almost certainly the last sugarcane harvest for the Douglas region, an estimated 200,000 tonnes from local cane fields will be transported to Gordonvale this season for crushing, with a Government commitment underpinning the transport and processing of this crush.
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