Blue Agave Crop Grown in Far North Queensland to Be Burnt at Sugar Mill for Power Generation

by Courtney Wilson (ABC News) Blue agave — which is the base ingredient for tequila — is currently grown on a commercial scale in Mexico, but Queensland's MSF Sugar is aiming to become a world industry leader, with plans to plant 4,000 hectares of the succulent on the Atherton Tablelands.

About 3,000 plants have been growing on unused land close to MSF Sugars' Tablelands mill since late 2017.

"It didn't need irrigation, you got a huge amount of biomass from it, and you could also make ethanol from it, so you got two things from the one crop: fibre plus the ethanol." (MSF Sugar's business development manager, Hywel Cook)

"We've chosen this plant because it's in a very similar position in Mexico, so the same distance away from the equator and the same elevation from the sea," Ms Smith said.

"We've chosen it for its drought-proof qualities so we're not going to irrigate it, it's going to be grown in quite rough country."

By the time the plants are ready for harvest, each blue agave can weigh up to 150 kilograms, and unlike in Mexico where they are only harvested for the juice in the stem, MSF Sugar plans to use the entire plant.

"We want to separate the useful parts of the agave plant. So we want to separate the fermentable juice, we want to separate the fibre and we want to separate the waxes as well because there's a high value product that's made from the waxes as well," Mr Cook said.

"So you start to make a factory, a large-scale factory which is worth half-a-billion dollars, which is making sugar, it's making electricity, it's making ethanol, it's making cattle feed, waxes, biodiesel, it makes a lot of interesting things." READ MORE