Advanced manufacturing in sugar

Sugar - the powerhouse of Queensland's regional economies 

The sugar industry already supports around 23,000 jobs up and down the eastern coast, from Northern NSW to beyond Cairns. For many regional Queensland communities, it is the anchor industry that provides the economic impetus for other activities such as engineering services, transport and logistics, and the production of plant and equipment.

The industry can grow this manufacturing base by utilising opportunities in the bioeconomy including bioenergy and bioproducts such as bioplastics. To ensure these opportunities are economically viable we need certainty that we are investing in the opportunities with the highest economic value, noting the finite feedstock (cane and land under cane) available in Australia.

Advanced sugar manufacturing 

Sugar manufacturing is transforming into a high-tech 21st century sector that needs to optimise the use of limited feedstock to not only create sugar, but products as diverse as fertilisers, molasses, bioplastics, biofuels and electricity. Our sector needs an R&D agenda to match this ambition. ASM has proposed a Centre of Excellence for Advanced Sugar Manufacturing, which will play a crucial role in leveraging technologies like automation and AI, and promote world-class efficiency, sustainability, and product quality in sugar manufacturing.  It will also develop the researchers and expertise the sugar industry needs to be able to chart a viable pathway well into the future.

Re-establishing sugar as a viable career pathway 

To bring these opportunities to life, we need people.  The sugar industry is experiencing significant labour and skills shortages, a challenge that will become more acute as our workforce ages. Unlike the resources sector, we depend on local communities for our workforce, with many of our skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled workers coming from these regions.

ASM has proposed a Sugar Skills and Career Start Program, which will be a structured program aimed at attracting and training potential workers, particularly younger people, who can address these gaps, while creating job opportunities for regional communities up and down the Queensland coast.