MOSSMAN’S YEAR AHEAD: Town’s recovery largely depends on Mill solution
MOSSMAN FUTURE
Mossman faces huge challenges over the next 12 months: its future most likely hinges on the local sugar mill and how businesses continue to recover from the devastating ex-Cyclone Jasper and attached flood events.
According to one Newsport source close to the region’s business community, much of the entire recovery of Mossman depends mainly on the Mill and its associated companies – and if indeed the Mill itself survives.
“The romance of Mossman being a sugar town, and the Mill and everything, we really want to keep that,” our source said.
“But we need other things as well – like the biofuel, or using the sugar cane tops to make disposable containers, all those sorts of things need to be brought in as well, but unfortunately it takes time.”
Moving forward
In the meantime, Douglas Shire’s Deputy Mayor Lisa Scomazzon believes a lot of businesses have kept their chins up, have tried as much as possible to put the natural disaster behind them and are already moving forward.
“I think a good example is, the flood comes through and a couple of days later, everybody was helping each other clean up, and some of the businesses were already opening,” Cr Scomazzon said.
There is still uncertainty in the town’s small business community over outstanding insurance claims submitted after the flood deluge in December – and if some claims will ever be paid.
Water supply rebuild?
Also, Cr Scomazzon told Newsport, the shire’s water supply will take a lot of rebuilding and reworking, because the massive floods and landslips along the creeks and rivers where ‘raw’ water is taken in have changed dramatically.
“The plant just cannot cope with the drastic changes – it’s not just one or two little outlets, there’s been major changes,” she said.
Without a doubt, the state and probably also the federal government will be called on for assistance to help revamp and even rebuild parts of the water plant and network.
“I do know our CEO is working closely with the state and federal governments about putting a proposal together.”
Mill ‘D-Day’
The ‘D-day’ for the Mill will be in less than two weeks’ time – when the administrator meets again with shareholder-growers and other stakeholders to hear if a proposal for the Mill to change direction more towards the production of biofuels and other by-products other than sugar, has by that time, gained financial backing from the state government.
Unless the new Mill proposal gets the government support it needs, it will be hard to imagine any other scenario other than liquidation.
This would mean the end of the sugar industry icon in Mossman, and with it the loss of more than 100 jobs as well as the negative economic spin-offs that could be felt in the town and its surrounds for many years to come.
“What’s going to happen to the 2024 crop?” our business community source asked. “Is the Mill going to be ready to do anything by June? Honestly, I doubt it.”
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