Huge sugar-loading complex

Press, 30 August 1979, Page 21

Huge sugar-loading complex

This new off-shore bulkloading facility, believed to be the longest in the world, has been built to streamline Australia's sugar export trade. The sAustss million wharf, jetty, and loader stretch 5.7 km into the Coral Sea from the port of Lucinda, in north Queensland. They have been built to withstand cyclones that sweep through the area each year. The facility can load the world's biggest bulk sugar ships (up to 45,000 tonnes) in natural deep water, in less than 36 hours. Australia exports more than 2.5 million tonnes of raw sugar a year to Ca-

nada, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Japan is the biggest customer. Ninety-five per cent of the Australian crop (about 3 million tonnes a year) is grown in Queensland. The Australian Prime Minister (Mr Fraser), who officially opened the new facility, described it as “an imaginative and farsighted concept” which would provide an immediate freight saving to the Australian sugar industry of SAustß million a year. The Lucinda loader is the culmination of many years of planning to ensure that the crop is ef-

ficiently stored and transported, in order to contain local handling costs and give Australia's exports a competitive edge on world markets. Contract work on the off-shore structure began in January, 1977 and was done on-shore and at a point half-way along the jetty, while the wharf head was built independently, as an “island.” Piles were driven from a travelling bridge structure, supported by the jetty section already built. The jetty was completed in 21 months and the entire structure took only 24 months to reach the commissioning stage, about twice the rate of all

known similar structures. Lucinda’s first cargo (for Japan) was loaded in February, 1979. The bulk sugar is carried from the storage sheds to ships at the loading point by a 5.7 km belt system designed to move 1400 tonnes an hour. The system has already carried a peak load of 1750 tonnes an hour and can be improved, if required, to carry 2000 tonnes an hour. It takes 22 minutes for sugar to travel from the shoreline into a ship’s hold. At any given time the 1.22 m wide belt carries 600 tonnes of sugar. The jetty follows the earth’s curvature and over its length dips 2m from horizontal.