FEATURE
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sweet legacy The sugar cane harvester factory officially closed 17 years ago, but for those that remember Toft Bros, it’s a memory worth preserving. Anthony Wingard reports
1. T he Toft Robot 364 Mk2 chopper harvester 2. Toft Bros was a world leader in sugar cane equipment 3. In its heyday, Toft Bros’ Bundaberg factory employed hundreds of locals and sent machinery around the world
They started a revolution. Instead of having a chain driver, you had a hydraulic tube with oil in it running a motor.
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or the many who loved the Toft name, 2004 was the end of the affair. For decades, Toft Bros was the undisputed king of the sugar cane world and its hometown of Bundaberg was the global epicentre of the cane harvester manufacturing trade. Nowadays, if one hadn’t lived through the zenith of the Toft years, it’s hard to fathom just how big Toft Bros was, especially considering its rise from the banks of the Burnett River to become one of the world’s leading manufacturers. Many hailed the Toft brothers – Colin and Harold – as revolutionaries. Others hailed them as geniuses. “No single family made a bigger contribution to cane harvesting than the Tofts of Bundaberg,” says Bill Kerr, author of They’re all Half Crazy: 100 Years of Mechanical Cane Harvesting. The sentiments for the Toft family and its brand of cane harvesters and loaders were generous, but those within the industry knew they carried significant truth. After all, as one newspaper headline from 1970 put it: “Toft Brothers Industries in Bundaberg can rightly claim to be the world leaders in the field of full track high flotation cane harvesters and transporters.” The esteem in which Toft Bros was held, both across the industry and within its local community, meant the closure of the plant was a bitter pill to swallow for those who had witnessed the rise of a local brand that catapulted the rum city into public discourse around the world. But, as sugar prices plummeted at the turn of the millennium – they almost halved between 1997 and 2002 – Toft’s parent company CNH Industrial uprooted the manufacturing plant, relocating its operations to Brazil and causing mass layoffs for staff at the Bundaberg factory. It has now been just over 17 years since the Bundaberg factory closed its doors; yet the influence of the Tofts remains, not only in the region but in the sugar cane industry in Australia and across the world. Tony McGarry, treasurer of the Rum City Vintage Machinery Club, who also worked for the Tofts on the factory floor at Avoca Road, says the influence of the Tofts in the Bundaberg region is paramount. “They created so much equipment that supported the cane industry in Bundaberg,” says McGarry. “That’s why the Tofts were so important.” “It meant a lot to the family too because, besides the part of the family which were involved in the harvesting part of it, there were other [Toft] brothers who were involved in farming and other parts of Bundaberg.
“It was quite a large family all they all had something to contribute to the sugar cane industry.” As the final harvester rolled off the floor of the last Australian manufacturer of cane harvesters, one Toft representative put it very simply: “It’s really gut-wrenching stuff.”
TRAILBLAZERS To illustrate the story of the Tofts is to describe a pair of trailblazers who lived out the Australian dream. Colin and Harold were the youngest of a large and poor family, raised in Bundaberg during the great depression where they worked cutting sugar cane by hand six days a week. Their first machine, which they built in 1940, was a cable loader fashioned from scrap metal and an old Model T Ford, which was put together to help pick up harvested cane bundles in their own paddock. Their early success led to the Queensland Cane Growers Council commissioning the brothers to develop cane harvesting further, with its general secretary, Ronald Muir, saying: “These people have definitely solved the mechanical harvesting of straight cane.” What followed over the ensuring years was a series of consecutive and calculated machines that propelled the Tofts to the mainstream after Harold and Colin formally established the Toft Bros partnership in 1947. The Tofts set themselves apart in the scramble to mechanise cane harvesting through their use of hydraulics – the first of which was their hydraulic loader in 1956; developed through Harold’s willingness to push the conventional thinking of that period. With just one person operating the loader (opposed to three in their initial cable loader), the Tofts were efficient in the field and the only manufacturer who had successfully used hydraulics. As they continued to develop their hydraulics, Harold – the brains behind the machines, and Colin – the marketing guru, soon realised the future of cane harvesting was with chopper harvesters. McGarry says the Toft name really took off following the release of its first hydraulic chopper harvester. “When Toft started to get into the chopper harvester business, they said ‘no, not this chain business, we’ll use hydraulics’,” says McGarry. “They started a revolution. Instead of having a chain driver, you had a hydraulic tube with oil in it running a motor and that really made the cane harvester business go on.
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6/05/2021 2:03:02 PM
