Sugar Milling
Sugar milling has advanced greatly since the late 1880's when small juice mills crushed 80 tonnes of cane per hour. Now Bundaberg Sugar’s technically advanced sugar mills crush up to 450 tonnes of cane per hour and convert the cane juice to raw sugar crystals.
In total the company's mills have a daily crushing capacity of more than 41,000 tonnes of cane and produce more than 550,000 tonnes of raw sugar per year.
Tableland mill, west of Cairns near Mareeba, is a new "state of the art" mill which began operation in 1998.
Babinda mill is located south of Cairns in tropical north Queensland, where the cane farms enjoy a high average rainfall in one of the wettest areas of Australia.
South Johnstone mill near Innisfail supplies raw sugar to the bulk sugar terminal at Mourilyan Harbour, one of Queensland's major loading terminals for raw sugar exports. As a result of cane crop and plant damage caused by Cyclone Larry (March 2006) in the Innisfail and Babinda areas, the Mourilyan mill which had also previously operated in the area has now been closed.
Millaquin mill is located at its original site on the bank of the Burnett River in Bundaberg. This is an integrated site at which cane is crushed, raw and refined sugar is produced. Nearby, alcohol is distilled and rum is bottled.
Bingera mill is 22 kilometres south-west of Bundaberg and receives cane via some 160 kilometres of company-owned cane railway network.