Sugar Industry

Industry > Sugar Industry

Sugar is a product that nobody needs but everyone wants. When it became immensely popular in Europe in the 18th century, slaves grew cane on plantations in the New World. The abolition of slavery led to the development of indentured labour systems – rather like slavery, but cheaper.

Sugar has been highly prized in Australia since 1788, when (as rum) it even enjoyed the status of currency. The Colony imported it from the Philippines and Mauritius until the 1860s when farmers in Queensland began growing cane and recruited South Sea Islander labourers. Then planters in Fiji followed suit with Indian indentured labourers.

As fussy consumers demanded white sugar, refining became vital. The Colonial Sugar Refining Company built refineries in Pyrmont and elsewhere, and scoured the world for agronomists, chemists and engineers. CSR’s Pyrmont refinery dominated the precinct, and expanded into related industries. For more than a century, CSR’s influence in Australia and Fiji was widely seen as a South Pacific Empire.

CSR diversified into sugar’s by-products – rum from 1900, a caneite factory in 1936, then industrial chemicals – until Pyrmont became Australia’s second largest industrial concentration (behind BHP). During the Second World War therefore CSR engineers and mechanics were able to turn their skills to the production of war materiel. From 1942 they moved into building material. Despite a disastrous venture in asbestos (at Wittenoom from 1948 to1966) this new focus was highly productive.

But sugar became problematic. In 1975 Fiji cut loose from Britain - and from CSR. During the 1980s sugar prices fluctuated alarmingly: the industry received, financial support from the Commonwealth and the states. However, as neo-liberal ideas prevailed, governments grew reluctant to protect sugar growers and refiners from international competition. Finally in 1989 Australians were allowed to import sugar, and Queensland terminated its exclusive agreement with CSR. With so much writing on the wall, in 1992 CSR decided to close down its Pyrmont sugar operations.

The timelime below describes the rise and fall of the sugar industry in and around Pyrmont.

CSR’s extraordinary impact on governments and people can be found under Politics.

Sugar Timeline

1842 First refinery in Sydney: Australasian Sugar Company (ASC)

1855 ASC recreated as Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR)

1862 First cane plantation and sugar mill in Australia

1863 Pacific Islanders recruited: the first of 60,000

1870 Central mills introduced by CSR in northern NSW

1870s CSR expands into Queensland and Fiji

1875 Pyrmont refinery built

1893 Sugar Works Guarantee Act funds central mills with backing from Qld Govt

1901 Federation: Islanders to be dismissed and deported