The Australian sugar industry leads the world in terms of productivity per hectare, but despite this advantage, it continues to struggle with profitability. Margins are under constant pressure and continuing to direct most future efforts to on-farm, logistics and milling productivity improvements will deliver only incremental gains to what is an already efficient production system.

Opportunity is emerging through the increasing global momentum of the bio-based economy. Australia’s supply chain vulnerability arising from a reliance on imported fuels, feedstocks, materials and finished products could be partially addressed through a repurposed sugar industry.

SRA is seeking to undertake an assessment of the biofuels technologies and associated market opportunities. The study is aimed at quantifying the micro and macro-economic value that might arise from an oil-canes industry, assessing the opportunity for SRA to develop a pathway to market for the technology, assessing the ability of the Australian sugarcane industry to respond to the market opportunity taking account of the strengths and constraints of the entire sugar industry supply chain, and providing advice to SRA on the intellectual property ownership, technical feasibility/readiness of the technologies available.