Independently Owned, Locally Grown, Community Loved
SKY Renewables Growers Town Hall Meeting at the Noorla Bowls Club in Ingham. Photo supplied
Enthusiasm for a biofuels industry built off Hinchinbrook’s sugarcane industry is growing in Ingham, with more than sixty canegrowers, community representatives and business leaders assembling for a town hall meeting last Monday.
With low sugar prices and rising costs hitting the local industry hard, there has never been a more important time for growers to look at diversifying their income streams.
SKY Renewables, a growing Queensland-based biofuels proponent and host of the town hall meeting, has been working with canegrowers in the Burdekin since 2018 to refine a proposal that links highquality Queensland agricultural feedstock, world-leading technology and increasing global demand for products like sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel.
Project Lion aims to turn the tops and trash of the cane plant and fallow crops into these low-carbon liquid fuels using a combination of thermal gasification and Fischer-Tropsch technologies.
SKY Renewables Founder and CEO, Simon Yim, said that the early recognition of the importance of feedstock, and persevering with direct engagements with primary producers in North Queensland, are what set the company apart.
“We are passionate about engaging growers from day one. Without secure feedstock, biofuels projects simply do not get off the ground”, Mr Yim said.
“We understand that canegrowers in the Hinchinbrook do things differently to the Burdekin, but the principle remains the same: paying growers an attractive price for a product that is underutilised and undervalued.
“However, it makes complete sense that we partner with growers in the Herbert River and Hinchinbrook district to help firm up our projects.
“We are just wrapping up pre-feasibility studies and will move to front-end engineering and design so we can finally get a biofuels industry going here in North Queensland.
“We look forward to sharing the benefits of the opportunities this new industry brings with local growers”.
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