CANEGROWERS Around the Paddock
CANEGROWERS advocates on behalf of sugarcane growers in Australia. This podcast series examines some key issues and challenges and celebrates the successes.
CANEGROWERS Around the Paddock
Talking Trade - Forward Pricing Strategies Are Reshaping How Growers Manage Risk
Sugar pricing might be the best-kept secret in Australian agriculture, offering growers a level of price certainty that other farming sectors can only dream about. In this revealing conversation with Simon Hood, Manager of Wilmar Grower Marketing, we explore the sophisticated sugar marketing system that allows Queensland cane farmers to lock in prices up to three years forward.
Hood takes us behind the scenes of Wilmar's operations across their four Queensland regions, where they service approximately 1,300 growers. What emerges is a picture of an industry with exceptional price transparency, driven by a deep global futures market that provides unparalleled pricing opportunities for forward-thinking producers.
The discussion reveals fascinating insights into grower behaviour, with Hood noting that while 85% of Wilmar's growers manage their own pricing rather than using pool structures, many haven't fully capitalised on forward pricing opportunities despite recent market highs. "We very much promote a risk management approach," explains Hood, emphasising that successful pricing isn't about hitting market peaks but rather averaging prices over time to ensure sustainability.
We also explore the physical premium market, which has normalised after delivering exceptional returns of $55 per tonne in 2023, and innovative financial tools Wilmar offers including pre-season payments at competitive interest rates, accelerated payment options, and even access to Wilmar's significant purchasing power for inputs like fertiliser.
Looking forward, Hood shares Wilmar's market outlook, noting concerns about Brazilian production exceeding expectations and a large Indian crop potentially capping price upside. With current prices around $575 per tonne, some growers are feeling pressure as margins tighten, making strategic price risk management more important than ever.
Whether you're a cane farmer looking to refine your marketing strategy or simply interested in agricultural commodities, this episode offers valuable insights into one of Australia's most sophisticated agricultural pricing systems.
Music. Hello and welcome to the Cane Growers Marketing Information Service update for August 2025. This is Dougal Lodge to give you a quick update on the sugar market and we have a very influential guest here today, Simon Hood from Wilmar Grower Services. So we're looking forward to having a quick chat to simon about the wilmar offerings and how they approach providing sugar marketing services for growers in queensland please note that cane growers does not have an australian financial services license, so all the information contained in this presentation is general information only now one.
Speaker 1:One of the things we actually talk about here in Cane Growers is that we are a very strong advocate for grower choice. But, however, we're totally supportive of a fair playing field and a vibrant competitive market for marketing services for all Queensland growers. So this is great to be inviting Wilma on the podcast today and we're looking forward to inviting along other marketing providers in the future. So, simon, welcome to the podcast. It's really great to have you here. It'd be really great if you just wouldn't mind explaining a bit about your role, what Wilmar the team does here in Queensland and, obviously, a little bit about Wilmar Sugar globally.
Speaker 3:Sure, Great Dougal, Thanks for having me on today. I'm the manager of Wilmar Grower Marketing. Essentially, as you talked about, we offer grower marketing services to cane growers across our regions. So you know Wilmar is one of the large global corporate players in the business. We operate across four regions here in Queensland far north Queensland, ranging from the Herbert where we have two mills, vertical where we have four mills, Prosserpine, one mill, and down in Plain Creek we have a mill as well. So across all those regions we have roughly about 1,300 growers that supply our mills and then we offer our marketing services to them to help them maxim, maximize their cane price.
Speaker 1:So, simon, I know you've had lots of experience in working with many other industries in the agribusiness side, with growers. How do you see sugar being different to some of those other commodities here in Australia in terms of how growers approach their pricing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, as you've mentioned previously, doodle the sugar marketing here is a really good system that we've got there for sugarcane growers.
Speaker 3:As I've worked across a number of different industries prior to joining Wilmar three years ago and as I've told many growers, I think it's actually one of the you know well-kept secret in Australian agribusiness because what you know, the services and the products that cane growers have to maximise their cane price through their GI sugar exposure is really slick.
Speaker 3:When you look at other you know other industries, I mean obviously cotton's probably been the benchmark historically around you, historically around price risk management, and then the grains as well. But when you look at some of the other large industries, like the cattle industry and I worked in the dairy industry before this I mean with the price discovery that you get through the sugar marketing up here is next level. So I think growers are really fortunate to have had this developed over a number of years. There's been a lot of innovations recently that you know that's pushed it further along the educational curve and it's you know it's a great system where growers can, you know, look to lock in prices after three years forward to underwrite their you know their cane price going forward.
Speaker 1:So, simon, if you look at some of these other industries, I don't think there's too many where you can actually get three or even up to five years of forward coverage for some of your price risks. So that must be pretty unique for sugar, but also a really good thing that you think growers would actually like to take advantage of, I'd imagine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're absolutely right and that price discovery is unique to sugar. I mean, it's obviously underwritten by a global futures market that's very deep and liquid and, you know, provides that capacity to provide those forward prices. But it's really only the grains market to the cotton market to a certain extent has that ability as well. So when you look at the sugar marketing, it is actually a very unique mechanism here we have in Australia. As far as growers go. It's a very transparent system. The level of detail that growers can see as far as how the price mechanism works and the costs associated with that are really very clear and transparent, which is great. It's very efficient. I mean it's a very schmick system as far as being able to get information out and the way that the growers can actually use the mechanisms there.
Speaker 3:That's been very well developed over a number of years. So that's terrific. I mean, of course this is all underwritten by the historic, you know, cane price formula. That goes, you know, that goes well to explain understanding how both the miller and the grower are both exposed to the sugar price and that sort of underwrites the success of the business, just because of the unique structure of the industry where there's only essentially one buyer of cane. So that takes a little bit to get your head around once you come in from another industry. But that's working very well. And the other thing it's very cheap when I look at it and I look compared to other industries for what the services that the marketing companies offer. It's a very cheap service relative to what the value of the underlying product.
Speaker 1:So, simon, you just mentioned obviously the cane price formula, and you, as a miller, you have your own MEI that you have to sort of, you know, manage the price risk on. How do you, how do you guys, approach this for wilmar? It must be obviously something which you focus on quite a bit, for your own business too, I'd imagine yes, so obviously that's right.
Speaker 3:As you say, the mei miller exposure interest is, uh, is managed similar, very similar to the way that the growers manage their gei price exposure, so as, as a grower, you are able to see every day that forward price where you're able to lock in an Aussie dollar effectively swap price, which I'm sure we'll talk a bit more about but as a miller, we do exactly the same as a grower. So the only difference is that we tend to manage the two legs of the Aussie dollar swap price the futures the US futures number 11 ice contract, separately to how we manage the Aussie dollar swap price. The futures the US futures number 11 ice contract separately to how we manage the Aussie dollar. So we can sort of, you know, have set each leg at a different point in time, whereas a grower, when they're locking in their board price, sets it at the same time.
Speaker 1:So, simon, you know, obviously you guys have got a number of districts that you cover here in Queensland. You know, and you know what do you see? Do you see some differences between your different districts and how they approach price risk management? And I know we've seen some of the trends over the last few years where people are doing more, you know, self-managed pricing. Are you seeing that continuing in the future as well? Do you think?
Speaker 3:So, yeah, so across, I mean most of our growers do use the forward pricing mechanism. So we've obviously got the tools of either pool pricing or forward pricing. So if you're in a pool pricing, you're effectively handing over the price risk management to the marketer, to the pool manager, or you look after your own pricing through the forward pricing and you know, and the great ability to actually lock in up the 97% of your price exposure through those mechanisms. So when we look across regions, yeah, I mean there is some variation across the regions within the I suppose overall for all the growers that market through us, we have a very high and we sort of encourage growers to take price risk control into their own hands. So we have about 85% of the tonnes that are marketed with us that are managed through growers managing themselves and the rest goes through our pool type structures.
Speaker 1:So, simon, if you've got a lot of your growers really focusing on their own self-managed pricing as a way to manage their risk, what sort of services do they really look for from you guys? What are they telling you they'd like to hear about from Wilmar?
Speaker 3:So as far as when you're looking after your own, you're setting your own prices, obviously you need good market information. I mean, that's the. You know we're not a licensed advisor so we can't actually advise. We don't hold an AFSL so we can't be an advisor to growers. So what we do have to do is be able to give them good market information. And I suppose, as far as Wilmar goes, as we've talked about being a large global player within the sugar market, we have a very good insight outside of Australia as far as what's driving the number 11 futures contract. So that's one of our primary goals is to be able to give growers good information so they can make their own choice about where locking in price and, look, we very much promote a risk management approach to that. I mean each grower has a different risk profile obviously, how much ups and downs they're willing to tolerate. We absolutely advocate for risk management and averaging price, looking at your cost of productions, et cetera.
Speaker 1:So, obviously, when the growers are looking at their pricing strategies, do you think many of them do know their cost of production? Is that a key part of how you guys talk about what they're up to?
Speaker 3:Oh look, it's certainly. I mean, I think that's a baseline, that's a baseline understanding. I think growers being able to understand their cost of production is important and it's something that I think that you know that's probably not still not terribly well understood across the whole industry, and I know that there are ways to be able to measure that out there. So that's certainly that's a starting point. So that's, yeah, certainly that's a starting point. Then I mean, like any business, yeah, you want to be able to be targeting a return over and above that. So it is very much that risk management approach averaging into prices, not trying to pick highs and making sure you miss out on the lows at the same time.
Speaker 1:And so we've had, you know, prices up, you know 50-year highs in the last couple of years. Simon, I know one of the things we've chatted about before is that we haven't seen quite as much activity in those forward price years that we probably thought. Why do you think growers haven't done quite as much pricing out in the 26 and 27 seasons which they could have taken advantage of if they were that way inclined?
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's a good point, dougal, and it's right. At the moment, you know, for 25 season, I think, yeah, we think growers are roughly 35%, 40% hedged for this year and where prices are now at, you know, $5.75, it's you know it's a pretty tough market to be selling into. When we've seen prices, you know, range up to, you know, over 700 for that market, there's been the opportunity to lock in that price. Look, it's difficult.
Speaker 3:Once, I mean, you know, two years ago or three years ago, 2023 season, we did see that 950 price spike where we had, you know, an alignment of planets between futures and currency and premiums that drove prices to an absolute high. So it's probably taken growers a while to get that number out of timeframes for growers for prices over the last sort of 24, 25, 26 season that we've seen that that's sitting at that average. So it's, you know, I think it's just that basic premise around looking at your pricing as a risk management. We all want to maximise our price but at the end of the day, you're never going to. If you sell on the high, it's only going to be a fluke and the reality is you're not going to sell everything on the high. So you know, you're sort of you know you're going to be disappointed that you didn't sell more. So you've got to get that out of your mind and basically looking at an averaging over a time frame and making sure that you take out the lows.
Speaker 1:So, Simon, it sounds like most of the growers marketing with Wilmar are pretty focused on managing their own price with themselves and that means I suppose the focus is going to shift on your performance as a marketer of the physical sugar and the allocation account or the shared pool components for the Wilmar marketing team. We've seen some pretty high levels over the last couple of years. Maybe you want to take us through just how you guys have been approaching that and obviously we've seen a bit of a decrease. So what's coming up in terms of the allocation account and the shared pool for Wilmar?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're right. I mean, as we talked about, 23 was a year that both yeah, we had the swap price high and we also had the premiums, the physical premium market, very high. I think the allocation account returned something like about $55 IPS that year, which is a magnificent return on top of that. So theoretically, you could have nearly got to $1,000 if you'd sold at 9.50 and then you added your $50 on top ofically, you could have nearly got to $1,000 if you'd sold at $9.50 and then you added your $50 on top of it. You essentially would have been locking in $1,000 a tonne. So look, yeah, so those premiums have absolutely they came back. Obviously, in the 24, 25, 24 season we're back into the $30 a tonne area and this year the early indications for 25 season are that we're going to be back towards more like $15 a tonne, over and above, and that's largely driven by the dynamics within the Southeast Asian market, with the big Thai crop coming online being probably the major player in that outcome.
Speaker 1:So essentially, the Far East premiums or the FOB premium levels are returning to more normal levels. I suppose is what you're seeing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, that's right. Well, as we know, it was five, six years ago. It was basically zero or even a negative on the premium levels after the cost. So I don't necessarily think we're going back there. But if we have a couple of big tyre crops, then potentially, yeah, we're going to have a couple of years of potentially single-digit or just low double-digit returns coming out of the premium account.
Speaker 1:Simon. So I know you guys publish the breakdown of all your cost components in your allocation account or your shared pool. So tell us, how are you managing those costs to be competitive for growers?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's absolutely. I mean, that's one of the things that I mentioned earlier about. The great thing about this industry is the transparency and the cheapness. I suppose, as far as a grower goes, it is a very efficient industry in this aspect and we look to absolutely minimise our costs so the maximum returns can be, uh, go back to the growers, so, uh, so as far as our cost, I mean, basically we have a standard marketing service charge that gets indexed just by the inflation number each year. So essentially we just make ensuring that we um cover our. We have a fixed cost fee, so we're basically a fee for service and that's sort of you know a line item in our, in the detail in the allocation account, um, and yeah, look, basically we just make sure that you know we're.
Speaker 3:We're essentially set up as a cost recovery business. The marketing part of wilmar um is essentially just set up as a cost recovery part. So we look to minimize our costs on the ground and you know it's largely people and you know that's a big part of our service is actually having people on the ground out and out talking to growers about this sort of thing. So the majority of our costs are linked to people and there's a few um, you know, a few other overhead costs that go in there, but we look to minimize those so we talked a bit before about the the sort of grower services for sugar being a bit of a leader across.
Speaker 1:You know australian agribusiness. You know in this innovation space, you know I'm sure you guys have got lots of things you're working on to try and continue to add value to growers. What are some of the things you're focusing on? You know that you are currently doing and and you have coming up in the future yeah.
Speaker 3:So obviously over and above, I suppose, what we think of as our value proposition to growers, over and above our information and our on-ground service that we provide Within the payment side of the system, we have some good mechanisms there to help growers with their cash flow side of things. Obviously we have the pre-season payment, which is where we can advance $5 a tonne prior to the season and at a very competitive interest rate that currently is 5%. So we have a lot of growers that use that in the first half of the year where obviously the cane payments have dropped right away and they can advance that, and so that's a good service. I mean, when you get into the season, the actual, you know the default payment schedule a 70% advance against your deliveries. It really accelerates your cash flow. We've got the cash on delivery mechanism there that you can actually advance up to 90%, if you want, of your payments, as opposed to waiting for it to incrementally get up there into March next year. You can actually have 90% up front. Once again, there's a slightly higher, you know, finance charge associated with that, but that's only calculated off the 5% interest rate that we use with the pre-season payments. So effectively it's very cheap money as far as growers go.
Speaker 3:And then, yeah, then there's been some, you know there's been some. You know product innovation as well. I suppose around, yeah, we reintroduced the. Well, we reb been some. You know product innovation as well, I suppose around here we reintroduced the? Um, well, we re-badged our managed pool into a managed pool plus, uh, last year. And that was just on feedback from growers who, you know, as we've talked about, we've had a very volatile couple of years of prices, um, you know, up to 9.50, down to 5.50, back to 8.50. Yeah, so there's the.
Speaker 3:All our growers who are typically, you know, are forward pricing. You know they have been sort of belted around a bit, I suppose, by the market and are a bit fatigued by that. So, you know, on feedback from them, we said, well, why don't you give some of that you know risk back to us? We'll manage that. You know that price risk for you put it in a managed pool. We'll put some of our MEI in there as well. So we've got skin in the game. So we match it, you know, tonne for tonne. We seeded it with 30,000 tonnes and then we'll manage it over a slightly long period because we know the benefits of looking at prices over not over a short period of time, but you've got to look at over a longer period of time. So we've so that sort of hit a nerve. We had a lot of growers sign up for that and it's travelled along pretty well.
Speaker 1:And are you doing anything in the cost input space like fertilisers or other sort of inputs that the growers would have?
Speaker 3:Yes. So on that, I mean last year we actually had our first grower survey for a long time, had our first grower survey for a long time. And one of the questions that we asked about, you know, besides your relationship with Wilmar as a miller and a marketer what else keeps growers awake at night? And number one on the list was input cost inflation. Not surprisingly, as we know, you have costs arising across the board for everyone. So we thought, well, how can we help out with that?
Speaker 3:And absolutely, you know, as a big grower ourselves, yeah, through the Wilmar Farms, we have a very good relationship and a very, you know, strong commercial relationship with with elders, uh, here, and so we're able to essentially say, well, you know, we've got the benefit with that as, just being one, a very large customer, but two, being such a big customer, we also have the ability to lock in fertiliser prices over and above the standard you know, commercial terms that a grower would have.
Speaker 3:So what we said well, okay, you can piggyback off the back of that, you know, for growers, you can join our contracts. So when we, early in the season, we go in there and lock in yourrea prices that are able to be locked in over, say, a 90 day period and then therefore, when you go in there and price your blend, when you're looking for your, you know your um, your returning blend. Basically you can use that. You know that price component, which you know typically makes up to 70 percent of you know your fertilizer price um, you can, you can get that. So you've got one, you've got the benefit of knowing that you've got. You know the market. The urea prices tend to rally through the seasons from you know, from the second half of the year. You've locked that in early. But then you've also got guaranteed of supply because we've locked in a volume of contracts. So at times when you know, for whatever reason, there's a disruption in the supply chain of fertiliser, that you know that if you're on the program that you've got supply guaranteed.
Speaker 1:So, simon, you mentioned you know obviously, the market information something that your growers are really interested in the Wilmar districts.
Speaker 3:What do you put out there for your growers? From the Wilmar team. Yeah, so we do it across a number of different timeframes. So on a daily basis we put out an SMS to all our growers. They receive the Aussie dollar swap price on their phone every morning to see what has happened overnight and what the forward prices have changed. On a weekly basis we provide a more detailed market analysis, where it's a collation of the. You know the global sugar intel from from our, from our network. We put that into a, an email that goes through to growers, summarizing, you know, some of the bullish and bearish components in the market. On a monthly basis we put out our pool reports, which we've talked about with the, with the level of detail shows how the pool prices are traveling and how the other, more most importantly, how the allocation account is traveling with the premium side of things. Um, and then then probably our.
Speaker 3:Our highlight of the year is actually getting peter bingham out here, our global sugar trader who comes around. He's actually I was speaking to him last night and he's um. He's coming here again in late September. So we'll be running through the regions where we have a nightly gathering and he gives us more of an update on the macro events that are affecting the sugar market and the physical and both the future side of things. I mean, then we also do some sporadic market alerts where we see something of absolute interest. So, for example, last year when the fires started ripping through the Brazilian crop, then we could see that the market was going to react to that. We sent out an alert to growers as a one-off. There's something going on here you need to be aware of.
Speaker 1:So, with your current information that you have at your disposal, Simon, I'm not sure if you publish any forecasts or any outlooks, but are you happy to share a little bit of your current outlook from the Wilmar desk for 25, 26 and beyond?
Speaker 3:Sure. So in general and typically this is what the team's doing every day of the week talking to growers about this, because I mean, that's usually the first question that the team get when they're out there is what's happening with prices. So we have Bevan Patterson, who's our risk manager, who sits in Brisbane and he basically looks after. So he collates a lot of this information from Peter Bingham and the team globally and then filters that down to us. So really our outlook at the moment is and we're not that optimistic about prices. In short, we're not super bearish or negative on prices. We've obviously been trading in a fairly tight trading range over the last couple of months this sort of 16 to 17 cents a pound in US terms. So we and yeah, the big challenge is we're still only halfway through the Brazilian season. We're still everyone's still trying to guess what the final number of sugar is out of Brazil. We're probably on the higher side than most of the market as far as that goes. So that sort of gives us a bit slightly more bearish outlook than some others.
Speaker 3:We also see a big Indian crop coming through at the end of this year. Whether or not they will export at these prices. They probably won't export, but that sort of then effectively puts a lid on the market. If it gets up to $0.18, $ 19 cents, that's where Indian exports become. Without subsidisation that becomes reality because the internal price is still fairly strong over there. And then obviously we've got the big tire crop which is affecting our premiums. So, look, there's still a long way to go in the Brazilian crop. We're only just over halfway.
Speaker 3:But we've seen some big numbers come out of there, especially around the sugar mix side of things, and that's something that we talked about last year when peter was here. It's just the amount of investment that's been going in to brazilian mills as far as being able to increase their capacity to crystallize sugar over ethanol. Because of that, you know, historically last couple of years there's been a huge disparity between the you know, the returns for sugar crystals over ethanol. Um, so we've seen, you know, I think the last un of years there's been a huge disparity between the returns for sugar crystals over ethanol. So we've seen I think the last Unica report showed a 54% sugar mix over ethanol in the fortnight and we're travelling at around year to date, 52%. So that's massive compared to other years.
Speaker 1:And so when we look at the outlook here, simon, some of these price levels are getting back towards cost of production levels, I suppose in the 25, 26 season. But I see forward prices are actually a bit higher than the prompt season at the moment as well. So how do you sort of see that playing out? Do you see cost of production being a bit of an issue in the coming 12 months?
Speaker 3:Oh look, absolutely an issue in the coming 12 months. Oh look, absolutely, I mean, I think you know, under $600 in Australian dollar in the swap price. I mean, certainly, you know growers are feeling a bit of pain. It's certainly not hopefully not cost of production for growers, but if it's, you know, if it gets down to $500, absolutely there's going to be some pain. And at 16 cents, I think, globally, you know mills will be struggling as well. There's no doubt that. You know, we're hearing that you know, the Brazilian mills at $0.16, they're not happy. Yeah, australian mills aren't happy at $0.16, obviously. So there is this dynamic at the moment. Is this an ethanol parity? We see somewhere around about that $0.15? So that's why we're getting down to $0.16.
Speaker 3:The market's holding. It's held again this week on a rundown. So we're hopeful that that is a flaw in the market. But I suppose the flip side is we don't see if it does rally. There's plenty of selling above the market. So in the short term we don't see if it does rally. There's plenty of selling above the market. So in the short term we don't see a lot of upside. And so therefore $600 is a pretty good price.
Speaker 1:So forward season prices for 26, 27 seasons are a bit higher than what we're seeing for 25. Are you seeing many growers starting to dip their toe in the water and getting some coverage out there, Simon?
Speaker 3:There's a bit going on. There's a little bit going on, dougal, but generally the forward seasons aren't covered well in the industry. Well, certainly I don't think across our regions they're covered well. So I suspect that would be the same across all regions. It would vary, obviously, and varies from grower to grower. But yeah, so I, I mean, as I said earlier, we're probably, you know, as far as the, you know, the grower base 35, 40 percent, you know, maybe a bit higher than that now for for 25 season, this current season. So still plenty of pricing to happen for this season for growers.
Speaker 3:Um, for next season, it's, it's much lower, like it's, you know, we're under, we're probably under 20 covered for 26 season. So so, once again, I mean, we are seeing that we've got a very flat price curve. So, yes, for next year's prices 575 and you know, 27 prices at 575. So there's, you know, I think that growers generally will need to be adjusting their, you know their expectations down from those numbers. You know the 700s and the 800s that we've seen over the last couple of years. They may well come back. You know, things will change in the market and those prices may well come back. But as we've seen, you know mentioned earlier, this $600 ton swap price has been quite a convergent point over the last three years. So you'd have to think that, over and above that, assuming you know your cost of production is better than that, lower than that, that that's probably not a bad place to start thinking and taking a long, hard look at pricing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, Simon, I know that the growers out there are probably you know, given the information you shared a bit probably concerned about what they are going to do in terms of their pricing activity, because it is lower than where it's come from.
Speaker 3:Who are some of the people that broad advice not advice, sorry, broad guidance around thinking about how to manage price risk? There are licensed, but we aren't licensed so we can't advise. So there are licensed advisors like the Famarcos of the world out there and Rob and James do a good job, I think out there.
Speaker 3:Growers, obviously with their accountants, can be, you know, crunching their numbers and trying to get to work out the cost of production. I mean there's other tools I know available as well, even through the cane grower site that can use work out their, get a guide to where their cost of production is. So I mean I think it takes, you know, for this sort of is. So I mean I think it takes, you know, for this sort of you know, when you're looking at your business management, you know the more people you can talk to around this, the better there's. You know we help as much as we can, but we, you know we're limited in what we can do. But there are other people in the industry that, yeah, that can be give you guidance around you know how to price, manage risk.
Speaker 1:I'm sure a question that a lot of the growers will be thinking about is when they're likely to be finishing up this year. Simon, what's the latest dates that you're looking at for the Wilmar Mill districts at the moment?
Speaker 3:Good question, dougal. I don't have those on hand here, but I do know that we have just released our latest estimates, or a re-estimate of what the crop is for this year, our latest estimates or a re-estimate of what the crop is for this year. So we're just still a bit under 15 million tonnes for this year. We've, you know, the Birkenland's just under 8 million tonnes, which is, you know, has been unchanged. We've increased our estimate for the Herbert slightly by about 280,000 tonnes, I think. So that's a good result. That we've got a bit more cane coming through the Herbert region back up to about 3.5, 3.55 million, about 280 000 tons, I think. So that's a good result. That we've got to be a bit more cane that um coming through through the herbert region back up to about three and a half 3.55 million tons of cane through there.
Speaker 3:Prosopine just just under 1.6 million tons. So that's pretty much the same as what we originally estimated. Um, in plain creek we've pulled back slightly from 1.6 down to about 1.53. So so, overall, um, yeah, the crop's relatively unchanged. The good news is, yeah, we've pulled back slightly from 1.6 down to about 1.53. So overall, yeah, the crop's relatively unchanged. The good news is, yeah, we've got some more, you know, cane coming through. You know the flood damage that we had up there is, you know, maybe not quite as bad as we thought, but the mills are running pretty well.
Speaker 3:You know, we've had a pretty good run through, I think I had a drive through the Burdekin there yesterday and it's certainly flattening out through there pretty quickly. So we're optimistic that we're going to have an earlier finish to the year and that's good for everyone, Good for the miller, it's good for the grower, so hopefully that plays out.
Speaker 1:Simon, thanks so much for coming on the Cane Growers podcast for August 2025. It's been fantastic to have you on here and share your feedback around what's happening in the Wilmar Grower Services area. Thanks for coming along. I look forward to catching up again soon.
Speaker 3:Oh, look, no problems, dougal, it's good to have a chat and I appreciate you taking the time out to let us have a talk about what we do as a business. I think it's you know. As I said earlier, it is an incredibly good service that is out there for cane growers as far as being able to forward manage their price. So that's our mandate is out there to help growers maximise their incomes.
Speaker 2:Please note that Cane Growers does not have an Australian Financial Services licence, so all the information contained in this presentation is general information only.