Identifying issues that reduce profitability for mills, growers and harvesting contractors was the aim of an SRA- Sunshine Sugar co-funded project undertaken at Condong and Tully Mills by researchers – Electrical and Electronic Engineering Graduate Barton Wixted and Research Fellow Rudi Bartels from Griffith University. 

The project sought to address the problem of measuring the quality of intake cane at the mill. The final report has been submitted for review. 

The project successfully demonstrated the viability of a low-cost off-the-shelf measurement system using robust sensors installed at sugar mills to record billet length in real-time. Despite teething and development issues, the system performed well at both Condong and Tully mills. 

Sunshine Sugar’s first prototype of the system was tested in 2020 with Barton Wixted researching the possibility of using artificial intelligence and computer vision to measure the billet lengths of intake cane continuously, 24 hours a day. 

“There is a basic management principle across industries as varying as accounting, engineering and quality management – you can’t manage what you can’t measure. In this case, it is not possible to manage billet lengths without measuring and knowing their actual lengths,” said Rudi Bartels.  

 “However, attempts to do this manually at the mills are prohibitively expensive in terms of labour and time. 

“The automation of the process will now provide information to empower mills, harvesters and growers to set target billet lengths for optimal returns to the industry.”  

Billet length has been shortened over the years in order to load and unload them more easily for conveying to the mill. They also increase the load density and weight carried per bin to reduce transport costs for haul-outs and the mill. 

“However, there are tradeoffs in terms of quality,” Rudi said. 

“Using the data collected by the system milling productivity and the financial implications of billet length can now be determined.” 

The project findings were presented at the Regional Sugar Milling Research Seminars in late March-April. A paper was also presented at this year’s ASSCT conference. 

Sunshine Sugar, Tully Sugar, Wilmar Sugar and Isis Sugar were consulted regarding billet length and billet quality assessments of supply cane. 

The mills agreed on the relationship between billet length and overall supply cane quality but each mill’s individual financial circumstances played a heavy factor in their assessments of the prospects of measuring and managing billet length. 

The relationship between billet length and packing density was a significant consideration for mills relying on rail transport. However, for road transport, axle load limits and associated total weight limits mean the packing density is not as important. 

The researchers thanked Sunshine Sugar milling staff for their assistance in time and resources, including Kent Selby and Phil Scroop. They thanked Tully milling staff for their assistance with trials and QUT Associate Professors, Geoff Kent and Simon Denman for assisting with the measurement data at the trials at Tully Mill. SRA funded the project under a Small Milling Research Fund grant.