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Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation |
Thirty Australian Champions
Shaping
the future for rural Australia
edited by Keith Hyde
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RIRDC's major publication documenting the experience of thirty outstanding Australians who, through their business enterprise, vision and perseverance, are making a significant contribution to the welfare and economic growth of rural and regional Australia. Each chapter is presentedf as a separate html file which you can view, download and print.
Cashews Australia
Some of the cashews growing wild around North Queensland are the legacies of fortune-seeking Malays who brought the trees to Australia during the Palmer River goldrush. “It's not surprising that the cashews have survived in the area for almost a century. The cashew tree does not require a great deal of maintenance and,” according to Cashews Australia’s Peter Shearer, “there are pockets of land around northern Australia that are ideally suited to cashews as a large-scale, horticultural crop.
Getting Started
The reliable growth and early production of the cashew in North Queensland initially drew Peter to the potential of crop. In 1988, he was looking for opportunities to diversify his macadamia plantation. He secured planting material from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries ’ Kamarunga Research Station near Cairns, and planted his first cashews in 1989 on his macadamia plantation near Mareeba. These trees bore their first fruit within a year of being planted. This early production, coupled with the production of cashew fruit and nuts earlier in the year than macadamias, impressed Peter of the potential of cashews as a viable alternative crop, allowing a more rounded usage of his farm equipment.
Peter Shearer inspects cashews in his on-farm storage silo.
Peter ’s next challenge was to find a suitable block of land. He looked throughout North Queensland and was eventually granted the rights to a 2, 400-acre bush block on the edge of the Tinnaroo Irrigation Scheme to the north-east of Dimbulah. The Dimbulah soil was a deep sandy loam, very similar to the soils on which cashews are grown in Brazil. It was free of frost, inland and therefore offered better protection from tropical cyclones than coastal locations. It was also within commuting distance of Peter ’s Mareeba macadamia plantation. The land was made available by the Queensland Government on the understanding that it would be used for the establishment of a North Queensland cashew industry. But it had to be cleared and developed from scratch.
In the meantime, interest in the potential of cashews as a new crop for northern Australia was growing. In the Northern Territory, cashews were also being investigated by a group headed Ian Duncan from CSR, with assistance from the Northern Territory Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC)and CSIRO. Cashews had been trialled in many locations across northern Australia from Townsville to Broome during the 1950s but abandoned soon after because of low yields.
Many of those original plantings survived against all odds and it was the hardiness of the cashew, together with its low water and nutrient demands, which now attracted people like Peter and Ian.
This early Australian plant material was investigated thoroughly, resulting in Peter buying a small property south of Cairns on which a number of the cashew trees planted in the 1960s were growing well. His early plant material was sourced from this farm and also from Kamarunga. At a later stage, some of the best overseas varieties from Brazil and India were secured and brought into Australia through plant quarantine.
Research and Development
However, still very little was known about the viable production of cashews in Australia under plantation conditions. Plantations were being developed in East Africa and Brazil but, throughout most of the world, cashews remained a village crop. A key information support for Peter at this time was the initiation in 1990 of annual workshops for researchers and growers who were interested in, or were already producing, cashews. Peter was encouraged by the free exchange of technical information at these workshops.
Below: The cashew
grows into quite a large tree even on poor soils with
low rainfall, but
requires irrigation and fertiliser to maximise yields.
Champion Qualities
- Complementary business
- Location with infrastructure and close to existing base
- Focus on quality and value adding
- Market chain development
- Collaborative marketing
- Industry leadership role
Peter Shearer was an
active participant in the industry workshops. He scoured the world seeking
information on cashew production and processing which he shared with his
industry colleagues. The two major world producers were India and Brazil.
Much of the Brazilian material was written in Portuguese, and this was translated. Many excellent research papers in English were sourced from India, providing what proved to be vital information for Cashews Australia and the industry researchers.
In 1992, CSIRO and RIRDC initiated a hybrid cashew breeding program with growers, including Peter, providing their farms to trial the new hybrids. Very little development work had been undertaken on the cashew around the world, and CSIRO ’s Dr Elias Chako, himself a cashew grower in India, was confident that better varieties, more suited to Australian conditions could be developed from the genetic material assembled from around the world in Australia. It was an ambitious program and Peter was a key Queensland participant.
Over ten years, Cashews Australia has grown to a plantation of some 45, 000 trees and an integrated first-stage processing facility at the Dimbulah farm, with an annual output of 230 tonnes. Peter ’s products are marketed both within Australia and overseas. “We add value to our raw product by processing the nuts into a range of confectionery products and through packaging under our registered ‘Tableland ’brand for sale through tourist and duty-free outlets. Another range is marketed through a Melbourne distributor under the ‘Australian Choice ’brand label. Broken and crushed nuts are sold to bakers,” says Peter.
Peter ’s development focus has been consistently on offering the finest quality cashews in the world, a target he now believes is attainable. “I have no doubt that our cashews will be sought out by the prestige, overseas markets, ”he says, “and if we can also perfect organic production, then we ’ll be the only producers in that area. Considering the world is fast looking for organic product, I have no doubt that our price premiums will be maintained."
The development of cashews as a new Australian industry has required many years of careful observation, selection of the best new varieties and production technologies, persistence against all odds, and crucial cooperation from government departments such as the CSIRO and the Queensland Department of Primary Industries.
Cashews Australia has also required a significant capital investment by Peter and his companies — an investment which he estimates to be close to $7 million over the past ten years.
Cashew Processing
The cashew nut kernel, as
we know it in retail markets, grows within an outer shell at the bottom
end of a cashew ‘apple ’. In many countries this apple is eaten fresh or
used for juice, but it is discarded in Australia. After harvest at Dimbulah,
the nuts are removed from the apple, bagged, and packed into 20-foot
shipping containers for transport to secondary processing plants in either
China, Vietnam or Indonesia. Processing primarily involves the removal
of the outer shell and testa around the kernel by hand. This process is
critical, because the cashew shell contains a corrosive liquid commonly
called CNSL, which can damage the kernel, and the hands of the workers,
if it is not removed carefully.
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Left: The premium crop at Cashews Australia is a result of many years of careful plant breeding by CSIRO and perceptive selection by Peter Shearer. |
Peter hopes that, in the future, he will be able to undertake all of the secondary processing stages for his cashews within Australia. This requires the development of new equipment by the Italian manufacturing company Oltremare. In the meantime, shipping the raw cashew nuts offshore for processing and their return to Australia in sealed bags for secondary processing and packaging is a viable option for Cashews Australia.
Challenges
In retrospect, Peter Shearer lists three major challenges he has had to address in the development of Cashews Australia. The first has been a lack of technical knowledge on how to produce a viable cashew crop within the high labour cost and economic conditions of developed countries. The second has been the financial demands of maintaining such a large commitment over many years. “Without my other business interests and income it would not have been possible,” Peter admits, “and even with them it has been a strain.” And third, it has been a real challenge to establish a new Australian product in a very competitive world market.
Cashews Australia are a long way from securing even one per cent of the world production, so their sights have been set on producing high quality. Peter says, “For someone going into a new industry that has previously been produced largely by Third World countries, I would say:be very patient, be prepared to invest far more than you anticipated, and be careful. Most of all, don ’t lose heart."
The Future
Peter believes that he is now at the stage where he has the varieties, the research information and the technologies to turn what was once a 2, 400-acre private experimental farm into an integrated industry. He has prepared a prospectus and entered the financial market for funds to develop a fully-automated processing facility in Mareeba, and the management infrastructure to support an integrated growing, processing and marketing system. “We now have a management team in place and the big step after that will be the processing plant,” he says.
Below: The cashew nut
or kernel forms within an outer shell at the end
of a fruit known around
the world as the cashew “apple”.
“That plant will provide the confidence for new growers of cashew in an area where I ’m sure there is still some scepticism. The processing plant will require an investment of about $2 million. We already have the buildings and drying facilities and Altramare have developed the new equipment. No doubt it will take a couple of years to iron out all the bugs, but it will save us $3 million a year in freight."
Peter is currently planning four new plantations, with the processing facility in Mareeba as the hub of the operation. He is planning these plantations as joint-ventures within a company structure. Joint- venture developers will be provided with planting materials, and research and management support.
“Under our contract with CSIRO for the supply of the hybrid varieties, we are able to provide all the necessary genetic material for contract nurseries to produce solely for the consortium partners. It is necessary to control the distribution of these advanced varieties and to keep the industry focused in the long term for cost-effective processing and marketing and to support further research."
Joint Marketing
Peter believes that he has to learn from his experience as a macadamia grower in an industry which he considers has become too fragmented. “We would sell to a major buyer, ” he says, “but we ’d be competing with five or six other growers from our own area. If we can structure a cashew industry in which all the material — and only the best planting material — is supplied, then we will have the ability to jointly market under the same contract. It would make for a regulated industry, but it would mean that we can maintain a viable product price for growers. It would not be a cooperative, but rather a joint processing and marketing effort."
Below: Cashews Australia’s
on-farm primary processing facilities
at Dimbulah, North
Queensland.
He also believes that North Queensland has great potential for cashews. “There are large areas which are not suited to other forms of agriculture but where the cashew grows wild. ”He is currently talking with Aboriginal communities in Cape York and the Aboriginal Investment Corporation about large plantations of cashews aimed at developing Aboriginal-based industries in the Cape York area.
With the world demand for cashews growing by eight per cent each year and production not increasing at the same rate, the future for Cashews Australia looks good, despite the challenges ahead.
In ten years time, Peter
hopes to see eight further plantations around Mareeba, and at least 1.
8 million trees in the ground. The projections for such an operation would
bring about $14 million per annum into the town. But whatever the outcome,
Peter appears genuinely pleased about the progress of Cashews Australia.
“It ’s a goal of mine to see a cashew industry develop, ”he says, “to see
an industry evolve from all this research. It would be good to look over
my shoulder one day and say, ‘I ’ve developed a new industry for Australia."
The
cashew apple is harvested as a fresh fruit and for juice in its native
Brazil.
