CANE growers got a chance to see the fruits of their labour as Wilmar Sugar Australia hosted the first of their North Queensland grower tours for 2019.
More than 75 growers toured the Plane Creek and Proserpine sugar mills last week, with tours of the Herbert and Burdekin facilities planned for next month.
Mackay regional operations manager Craig Muddle said the tours were an opportunity for growers to see the mills in crushing mode and see where the magic happens.
"A few of the growers hadn't been through the factory before and they enjoyed seeing the whole manufacturing process - from bins of cane coming into the tippler through to raw sugar travelling up the belt and into storage," Mr Muddle said.
"Some growers who had been in the industry for decades got a new appreciation of what was involved in processing cane into sugar.
"We also got some positive feedback about the tours and our milling performance from growers."
Mr Muddle said numbers were up on last year and it was pleasing to see such a good turnout.
"We hosted 41 growers at Plane Creek Mill on Tuesday afternoon and 35 at Proserpine on Wednesday," he said.
Plane Creek cane supply manager John Tait said growers were generally happy with how the mill had been running this season.
"It was great to be able to sit down as an industry and reflect on some of the challenges we had at the start of the season and where we're at now," Mr Tait said.
"The rain caused issues at the beginning, but we're well and truly making up for lost time. We are crushing consistently and are seeing some good throughput."
Plane Creek Mill has processed more than 520,000 tonnes of cane so far this season - about 40 per cent of this year's 1.28 million tonne crop.
Proserpine cane supply manager Tony Marino said Proserpine Mill had also experienced a slow start to the season due to rain, but was now making up for lost time.
He said the mill had now processed more than 500,000 tonnes of cane - about one-third of this year's 1.58 million tonne crop.
"We've invested a lot of money in Proserpine Mill and growers are seeing the improvements in performance and reliability."