From the Chair

By Paul Schembri, Chairman CANEGROWERS

The operating environment that the Australian Sugar Industry operates in today has changes markedly. When I was elected to the Farleigh CANEGROWERS Committee in 1983, the industry was highly regulated. In 1983, there was little if any environmental scrutiny and our sugar was sold at a regulated domestic price and via long term contracts.

How things have changed! We are now highly exposed to the world price and we are constantly having to prove our environmental credentials. Today the world sugar price is critical to our profitability, we are face scrutiny of our environmental practices and our farm practices are subject to regulation.

These factors have compelled the industry leadership to come together to begin to formulate a strategy to ensure the economic and social sustainability of the Australian sugar industry. Last year, the boards of CANEGROWERS, the Australian Cane Farmers Association (ACFA), the Australian Sugar Milling Council (ASMC), and Sugar Research Australia (SRA) started meeting on a regular basis to plan for our collective future.

Part of this process is identifying threats and barriers to our future development, while also acknowledging the opportunities that might lie ahead. It is important to stress that going forward, the production of sugar will always be the mainstay of our economic engine.

The potential of new opportunities with biofutures and bioenergy, bioplastics, and pharmaceuticals, has long been recognised and they are coming closer to being a reality.

The Industry Roadmap process will be an opportunity to test the business case for these opportunities. More than anything else, the real opportunity in this strategy planning process lies in the potential for the industry to organise itself and apply resources to manage some of the larger challenges that we face - around the environment and sugar in the diet.

The funding for this industry planning work has been provided by the CoOperative Research Centre for Northern Australia with the state and federal governments also acting as partners. History has always shown that the support of government is usually guaranteed when an industry can create a single vision.

So, we must take this opportunity to create one for our industry. Of course, there are many stakeholders and representative groups involved in this process. Some have even suggested there are too many growers and milling representative bodies to achieve consensus.

However, with an industry that operates along 2000 km, regional diversity has always been a feature of our operations. Even with this diversity and the many representative organisations involved, I am confident that we can come together and formulate a strategy for the future.

It would be ill-advised to suggest that this process will come up with any magical silver bullets to overcome all of our problems and challenges. But the fact that the industry is discussing our collective future is itself a huge positive step for our industry. Sometimes the most important step is the first step - and we have taken it together.

SRA

Sugar Research Australia's recent Annual General Meeting was significant in that long-serving industry stalwart Dr Ron Swindells retired as Chairman of the research organisation.

Ron is well known in the industry and has served in many capacities, not least as CEO of Mackay Sugar and Chairman of the Sugar Research Institute, amongst many other roles. I take this opportunity to farewell Ron, but more importantly to thank him for his dedicated service to the industry and for guiding SRA in recent years.

The measure of someone is their capacity to lead organisations, not only through the good times but also to apply a steady hand in the difficult times. Ron Swindells did that in spades. CANEGROWERS now welcomes Rowena McNally as the incoming Chair of SRA.

Rowena has a long association with the Queensland sugar industry, having spent several years as the Sugar Industry Commissioner and Chair of the Sugar Authority, as well as various roles with Queensland Sugar Corporation. I am confident she will make an important contribution to SRA.

Research and development is a critical factor in maintaining our international competitiveness.