Rocky Point Road Sugar Mill

Contacts:

Heck Group

Rocky Point Road Sugar Mill

Ph: (07) 5546 2422

Web: www.rockypointgroup.com.au

Wow, what an amazing experience this sugar mill was. We rolled in the Rocky Point Sugar Mill to check out the cane farms and sugar mills but were blown away by our generous hosts and the amount of input that goes into creating sugar. Established in 1878 and situated in Woongoolba is the Rock Point Sugar Mill. The mill is the only privately owned sugar mill in Australia. Thanks to partners at Sugar Research and Development Corporation we visited the team from Rocky Point Sugar Mill and were impressed by the shear size of their operations.

Here is a little more of their story...

It was the enterprise of German immigrants led by Carl Heinrich Heck. Sugar cane grows best in warm, sunny, frost-free weather. It needs fertile, well-drained soil and at least 1,500 millimeters of rain each year or access to irrigation supplies. These ideal conditions are found along the Queensland coastline. In Queensland more than 497,000 hectares of land is devoted to cane farming. Most farms range in size from 30 to 250 hectares.

Young sugarcane needs plenty of moisture and protection from weeds. Farmers use a cultivator implement which is hitched to a tractor to break up the soil and uproot weeds. When the sugarcane is taller, sunlight can't reach the ground, preventing most weed growth.

The area on which they grow cane stretches from Coomera / Pimpama Rivers in the South to the Logan River in the North and from the Highway to Moreton Bay. This area has been declared a Green Belt by the Government so it must remain agricultural. It is a flat low-lying area with 4 rivers running through it - Pimpama, Coomera, Albert and Logan. In the 1960s they placed a massive drainage system through consisting of five main drains which divide into smaller drains; each farm having drainage and each block being drained.

The actual area under cane is approximately 6,00 hectares, yielding approximately 90 tonnes per hectare. To yield 1 tonne of sugar, 7.5 tonnes of cane is requires.

The group loved this sugar mill so much, it was one of the favourite highlights on the wonderful culinary journey