CANEGROWERS Around the Paddock
CANEGROWERS advocates on behalf of sugarcane growers in Australia. This podcast series examines some key issues and challenges and celebrates the successes.
CANEGROWERS Around the Paddock
Stay Ahead: Smart Sugar Pricing Strategies You Can Use Today
Queensland sugarcane growers have access to some of the world’s best tools for forward pricing – a system many international producers can only dream of. But having the tools is only part of the picture.
How do we use them effectively? What should we be thinking about now to manage price risk in today’s global sugar market?
This month’s Marketing Information Service (MIS) update dives into exactly that – giving you the insights and strategies to make the most of your pricing options.
- Rob Imray at Farmarco Australia joins Dougall Lodge on the latest podcast to discuss how to use price risk management tools to make the most of the sugar market’s volatility and cyclical nature.
- Rob is a licensed financial advisor to many growers in the QLD industry and is also an experienced pool manager.
- the prompt global sugar prices have come under pressure over the last month and hit levels not seen for the last 2.5 years. But there are higher prices in forward markets.
🎧 Tune in now and make sure you're one step ahead when it comes to securing the best return for your cane.
Hello and welcome to the Cane Growers Marketing Information Service update for July 2025. This is Dougal Lodge to give you a quick update on the sugar market and also to talk about sugar price risk management. So we've got an interesting session today. We've got a special guest, rob Imray from Famarco. He's going to be joining us, so we'll have a bit of a talk about that as we go forward.
Speaker 1:So I think we've talked about in the past the amazing system we have in Queensland for sugar pricing that growers can access, and we've talked about.
Speaker 1:When you go to places like the Dubai Sugar Conference, other sugar industries and growers and also millers and even traders are amazed to hear that farmers in Australia are able to conduct sugar pricing activities up to several years out. So I think we generally do see this as a world-leading practice and platform that we have here in Queensland. So one of the things that we probably want to talk about today with Rob is how are we using these tools, these amazing pricing tools that we have available to us, and what are some of the things we need to be thinking about as we go forward? So we're very glad to have Rob here today. Rob has a number of different roles across both the sugar sector here in Queensland and New South Wales, but also across a number of other agricultural industries. So, rob, welcome and looking forward to having you on board. Maybe just give yourself a quick introduction, a bit of background to your experiences and how you're working with the sugar industry today.
Speaker 2:Yep, sure, thanks, dougal, and thank you for having me In your opening comments. Certainly the Queensland industry has remarkable means and methodology to price forward. It's something that certainly growers in other parts of the world don't have, so it's a significant advantage, particularly in an industry that has very little support. It's very open to the open markets so, no, it's a great system.
Speaker 2:I've been involved in sugar price risk management, which I wouldn't like to say how long ago. I started when the sugar board was the sugar board back in the very late 80s, but have been with my company for Marco, have been advising sugar growers now since probably about 2008. Predominantly prior to that, we were a grains and cotton company and still are grains and cotton, but sugar is quite a big part of our business these days and particularly with the change in the marketing arrangements roughly now, about 10 years ago I suppose, or very close to it, that certainly kicked along a bit and it's great. The industry's slowly maturing into its pricing. It's something the mills took on very, very quickly, growers a little bit slower to take on, but it's building.
Speaker 1:And so today, rob, you're obviously working across a couple of different areas in sugar. Maybe give us a bit. Are you working with end users or millers, et cetera?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so predominantly. When we first started back in sugar in 07-08, it was with mills. Back then there were more cooperative mills around, so we were working with Proserpine at the time and Tully were more cooperative mills around, so we were working with Proserpine at the time and Tully Proserpine obviously these days is owned by Wilmar Tully, by Coffco. We're still heavily involved in Tully in the sense that I suppose if I take a step back for a minute so Fomarco as a company advises individual growers, so we've got 50 or 60 individual growing entities I suppose in terms of growers up and down the coast that we advise. We also run the grower pools for Tully Sugar, so for COFCO up in Tully, so that's the grower economic interest pools, be it an actively managed or a harvest pool, and we also provide the New South Wales industry with support and services with the pricing and the management of their sugar.
Speaker 1:So you know what it's like to be holding the reins, so to speak, in managing the price risk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, I could say very experienced in that and that sort of sounds a bit uppity or what have you. But I've been doing it for 35 or more years and I'd have to say one market or another gives you a pain in the stomach every now and again but, yes, reasonably well versed.
Speaker 1:So here we are in July 25 and the prices actually are in a carry structure at the moment. So this means that the 25 season price is about 560 and we're seeing higher prices in the forward season. So 26 season is about $570 a ton and the 27 season about $575 a ton. So that's changed quite a bit over the last six months or so, where we we'd move from there being a deficit and the prompt price or the prompt season being a higher price than the forward markets to now the reverse. So we're seeing a lower price in the 25 season versus those forward markets. So don't want to put you on the spot here, rob, but that sort of tells us. I suppose we've moved into more of a surplus environment in the prompt market, or certainly the market is treating it like a surplus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're right, Dougal. I'd probably take the words. The market is treating it like a surplus at the moment. If you probably looked at a number of analysts around the world for 25, 26, they are forecasting small to moderate surpluses, and perhaps the market's trading that. I'd also probably think that you've got the world's biggest producer being center South Brazil in the really moving into the central key part of its harvest and pumping out a lot of sugar, and that in itself naturally to my mind at least anyway puts the market under a little bit of pressure. It's interesting, though, if you look at the London whites market, particularly August out to the December contracts, it's actually an inverted market, which suggests that the whites market's somewhat tighter than roars, so it's an interesting picture.
Speaker 1:So during the month we dropped down to levels we haven't seen for a couple of years about 15.5 cents a pound, which equated to about 530 Aussie dollars a ton. I think we've sort of gone from 50-year highs to now back to levels which are probably approaching cost of production, probably for Brazil and maybe even some of the producing regions here in Australia. So not exactly where we wanted to be compared to a year or so ago.
Speaker 2:No, it is a reminder to everyone that good things don't last necessarily forever. And it's a good reminder to everyone that sugar is a cyclical market. It's roughly a five or six year cycle historically. We're probably now two years into a cycle, if you think that the highs were back in somewhere around November, december 2023, and here we are in July 2025. So we are maybe not quite two years, but close to two years through a cycle. It would be nice to think that the low prices we saw a week or so ago are the lows. It would be nice to think that. Whether that's the case or not, I guess we'll be wiser down the track.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's one of the things I know we talk about in our business. Essentials training is that no one really knows where the market's going to wind up, so we know directionally. Are we at historically high levels or historically low levels, and are we near cost of production type levels? But there's a lot of moving pieces in the sugar market and, compared to some of your other markets, sugar's got lots of drivers, I suppose, which is not just the supply and demand, which does make it fairly complex to understand where you and things can happen rather suddenly too, can't they? Yeah, they can.
Speaker 2:Sugar is, as you say. It's, a complex market. Sugar is also historically, compared to a lot of commodities, a highly volatile market and you're probably talking and I'll take the numbers off the top of my head, but you're probably talking an annualised vol of 25 to 30% in sugar. So it is a volatile commodity. But you also made another good point in terms of uncertainty and things like that. And when we talk about managing commodity price risk, there are signposts like historic lows and historic highs and whether a price is above an average or above a standard deviation and those types of things.
Speaker 2:But we've got to also recognize that when we're advising or when growers are making forward pricing decisions, that you're making these decisions with really imperfect information. You're looking forward, you're trying to do the best analysis of a market and you're trying to predict the future, and that's always uncertain. So at the end of the day, when you're making decisions, you've got to recognize that you make them on the day with the best available information that you've got, but you are making them without perfect certainty. And that's a lot of decisions you make in life. No one knows the complete final outcome. But that doesn't preclude you from doing the best you can to get yourself at that point to make the right decision or what hopefully will end up being the right decision.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know in our business essentials courses we sort of almost talk about the cornerstone of any risk management activities is to know your cost of production as a starting point, and so the cane growers cost of production tool is there for members to access and use and, through the business essentials program, is available to anyone out there as well. So certainly, I imagine at these levels, especially when the market has dropped, it makes pricing decisions a little bit harder because you might be making levels which are not guaranteeing a large profit, like they were maybe a year or so ago guaranteeing a large profit, like they were maybe a year or so ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, knowing your costs and I guess we're always a bit push this quite often, I mean in terms of when you're forward pricing and making decisions about managing your commodity price risk or your sugar price going forward is you really need to know where you're coming from. And part of that is, as you say, knowing your cost of production. It's not only knowing your cost of production, it's knowing what your variable costs are. So you're sort of covering your cash costs, if I could use that analogy, knowing where you're covering your costs in terms of earning a decent sort of owner's income or owner's remuneration, but then also knowing that at a sugar price level, I'm getting a 1%, 2%, 3%, 5% return on equity. So I'd like to think that you really wanted to take a business-like approach to it, and part of that business-like approach is knowing your costs, knowing your signposts, as I would call them, going forward.
Speaker 2:And if the sugar price is at $700 and you look at your numbers and you're getting a 5% or 6% return on equity, that to me is a pretty damn good reason to get out there and grab some of that. And you're doing that not because the price might go to $800 or $1,000, who knows where it might go but you're doing it because that actually makes your business sustainable, profitable. It's just taking that pragmatic, business-like approach to it. Fine, meld a market view around it and some analysis around it, maybe various strategies in terms of what you're doing around that, but the core focus of it should be just simply a long-term, consistent, profitable business.
Speaker 1:And that's where that future seasons, intergenerational you're looking 5, 10, 20 years down the track. So if the sugar price goes high, in a way that's an opportunity to secure more longer term prices at those higher levels down the track. I suppose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to my way of thinking, your timeline's right. You really should be looking 10 years ahead, but at least a minimum sort of three to five years ahead, not so much 10 years ahead in terms of price risk management, but 10 years ahead in terms of your objectives and where you want to be going. And then operating in that sort of one to two to maybe up to five years in that price risk management space and just shoring up your income, shoring up your balance sheets over time, just to give you A, that protection in your business in case of a downturn, but also build that war chest to achieve your 10-year goals. For want of a better word.
Speaker 1:So when you're advising your clients, you're obviously saying you've got a longer-term time horizon. Is that where you see the role of forward pricing plays a pretty significant role there, or do you actually recommend to use in-season products from time to time as well?
Speaker 2:every opportunity we can to take responsibility for pricing the sugar. So a large majority of our client base is not in a pool. So there are products these days where pretty much everything bar the US quota, a grower can choose to price and we will do that. Yes, I'm a pool manager but for Marco's philosophy with our grower clients is we don't want to be in pools, we want to take responsibility and when you're doing that you really are by virtue. If you think of a season like, say, 25 season that we're currently in, we might have started pricing this season two or three years ago and you know the majority of our client base is roughly about 60 priced somewhere in the 60s, that pricing which we haven't completed already. So we nominate end of April or whenever the nomination is to finish that end season and we'll continue pricing that potentially through as late as April 2026. So we're really giving ourselves a three to five year window at times to progressively and I say progressively.
Speaker 2:I do see a lot of examples where a grower will go in and literally price 50 or 60% of the crop in just one hit and walk out again. Not our philosophy Now. We'll progressively price and we'll progressively price multiple seasons, A grower managing their price risk from our philosophical perspective would have a fair chunk of 25 done, a reasonable portion of 26 done and maybe some 27 done, just depending on what opportunities the market has provided. And the big issue we have is some of these enormous rises we've seen in the front end, or the spot price, if you like, by the time you're at two or three seasons. It doesn't translate. Sometimes there's still some very good prices out there and it is emotionally difficult. I'll bring in the word emotion. Seasons out might be $100 below the current price but discreetly, in itself is still an attractive price for what it is.
Speaker 1:That's one of the things when we've done our sessions and we look at that same data. Prompt price might be, let's call it, $900 a ton, which is what we had at one point in time, but that next season was like $100, $150 a ton lower, wasn't it Even like a hundred? So you're talking sort of big drop just even one season to the next season. So, yeah, I think that's, you know, losing emotion.
Speaker 1:You know, certainly some of the messages we've heard is well, you know there's an expectation that prices will increase to that spot level they're seeing. When they do achieve you know that the next, you know, in the next 12 months or 18 months or two years time, which I think, like you're saying, that's their unique delivery periods, aren't they those couple of years? So you know you need to always like, have that discrete view of it, but it's very hard because you're locking in a lower price than what you're seeing in front of you for the spot spot period yeah, it is hard to do and this comes back to having that real business-like focus and saying okay, regardless for you.
Speaker 2:For you know, if we're sitting here in November 23 and it's $900, as you say, and your 26 season price might be 625, yes, that takes a bit of doing. But if you can sort of keep that business style approach and go, okay, 625 out there, do some variances in my cost of production or whatever you know what, that's still a pretty good start. You're not perhaps doing the whole crop, of course you're not doing the whole crop, but 10, 20, 30% maybe is still a good cornerstone in a longer term risk management program.
Speaker 1:So, rob, you're a pool manager, but you're also helping to advise growers with their pricing decisions. This behaviour, emotion, and we see this in trading markets in general, financial markets Talk us through some of your thoughts around this and some of the signposts, as you called it, for some of the growers out there to be thinking about when they're making their decisions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a complex subject and we're all human. There's certainly been plenty of work done in behavioural economics and how people make decisions and what influences those decisions, and some of those are very much emotive human elements. You know we were talking before about locking in a price and seeing it go. Behaviour, or the fear of making a loss or the fear of making a bad decision, is one concept of it and then another concept of it is recency, the fact that people will go out and make a decision based on the most recent thing they heard, without pulling back and looking in a broader context. Back and looking in a broader context, and you can see that sometimes historically with because we do get to see a bit of the pricing behavior more generally in the industry and you can see people wander into the mill or to their market or what have you, and put it all on black and you sort of think, well, I wonder what drives that decision. So there's all these number of human behaviors and it probably gets quite complex and maybe gets a little bit away from what we're talking today. But I think there needs to be an awareness of again just trying to drag those, get the emotive element out of it as much as you can and just try and bring that back to making a business decision.
Speaker 2:And in a lot of cases, particularly in Kane, they're family businesses. They've got aunts or uncles or cousins or whatever involved in it. And I'll tell you right now if you make a decision today and the market goes higher tomorrow, someone else in the family knew that was going to happen and you shouldn't have made that decision. So you've also got to look at the structures of how you make decisions and who owns that decision and, if need be, get other people on board so that everyone without trying to get a committee structure, because that doesn't work particularly well either in pricing, but at least bring people along for the ride in the decision that you're making- I know that in the cane growers' offices lots of growers would ask people in the cane growers' office from time to time what should I do, what sort of pricing levels should I fix out or which pools should I select?
Speaker 1:And obviously cane growers can't give financial advice and that's one of the reasons why we do direct them towards organizations like FAMARCO to be able to receive that financial advice or their local accountants. But one of the things that certainly through our training and other activities, robert, seems like just even writing down a plan in itself and sitting down with an advisor or whether it's your accountant or a financial advisor like yourself just writing down that plan and setting your objectives is obviously quite an important part to work out what do you want to achieve, what your objectives are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think very much so. Does it need to be written? Not necessarily, but it needs to be formulated in some form or sense. And when you do that, that allows you to focus on what you're trying to achieve. And the other thing we get. I find, in the industry it's probably in a lot of industries, but you get a lot of noise. Everyone's got an opinion on this, Everyone's got an opinion on that. You just got to put that aside and focus, swim in your own lane, focus on what you want to do and what you want to achieve for your business and the outcomes that you want, and ignore the noise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I see that a bit in. If you look at the sort of productivity services area. Like you know, growers are usually quite rational when it comes to whether the CCS levels or their tons of cane in a particular block are higher or lower than their neighbours or where they've done historically. But sometimes I see the sugar pricing area we don't have quite that same level of rational approach and, like you're saying, it seems to be more emotional. People do want to get the best price, or they want to get a higher price, or they don't want to be lower than someone else. So there seems to be that sort of emotional attachment to decisions and makes it quite tricky, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is. It reminds me of my share portfolio at times. I think sometimes the best is never to look at it. But it's difficult. You make an agronomic decision and that decision might play out over several weeks, several months, several years. You make a decision in the sugar market and you wake up the next morning and the sugar market will have moved somewhere else. It is what it is, but if you want to sit there and mark your decision every day, the sugar market will let you it comes. You made a decision. It's best to ignore the things for a few weeks and that way you don't have to worry about the emotional side of it. But in all seriousness, no, you've got to keep focused on it. But just remember that you made a decision on the day for good reasons, for valid reasons, and if you did that, then it was a good decision. How it turns out, history will let that know. But if it's a profitable price, it should turn out to being a profitable business, and that's what we're all about.
Speaker 1:So, rob, we've just experienced a bit of a fall in prices over the last six to 12 months, certainly from the highs we had at the end of 2023. So you're talking about the cyclical nature of the sugar market and I suppose, in basic terms, I suppose what it sort of means is that when you have high prices, that encourages production and when you have low prices, it seems to encourage people switching out of sugar and into other crops potentially, or, in the case of Brazil, switching to ethanol as well. So maybe talk us through that cyclical nature, because I think it's one of the things. I think growers, when I heard them say high oh high prices are here, they do have that sort of feeling that prices will last forever. So I think that would be great to hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, dougal. It's one of the old chestnuts, isn't it, that you can drag out of the fire, as nothing cures high prices like high prices had to throw that in, didn't I? Prices had to throw that in, didn't I? No, I mean sugar historically. And I say historically because maybe things will change one of these days, but history is one of the better guides we've got to the future.
Speaker 2:So sugar tends to be that five or six year cycle. I think the last cycle we had was a little bit longer than what we would normally expect. I blame that on COVID. We blame a lot of things on COVID, so why not that COVID kind of delayed the upswing for, I reckon, about 12 months. But assuming we keep to that five or six-year cycle, invariably high prices tend to gain more production.
Speaker 2:This time in the cycle it's encouraged Brazilian mills at the margin probably to increase their crystallization capacity or their sugar-making capacity probably two and a half, three million tonnes as well as get a bit of increased area around the world. So if the price incentive is there, producers will find a way. Mother Nature, being kind, will find a way to increase production and then invariably we overproduce, although it's not evident in this cycle that we have. But put that aside. Invariably we overproduce although it's not evident in this cycle that we have, but put that aside. Invariably we overproduce, we come back off. So we spend a year, 18 months at high prices. We come back down to the bottom of the cycle. We spend two and a half to three and a half years of low prices Because invariably, cane for some of your bigger producers not so much India but certainly Australia, brazil, thailand cane's a return crop, it's not an annual crop that gets plowed out and away we go again.
Speaker 2:So when we overproduce you tend to be in that cycle for a while until growers either take cane right out or, as you say, brazil puts more of its cane towards ethanol. So you end up in this sort of extended low period and then of course nothing cures low prices like high prices and so on. The cycle repeats itself. Prices and so on. The cycle repeats itself To swing back into the forward pricing and the ability that the Queensland industry's got is when you can price three or four seasons ahead, you can use at least in theory, and practice is not always that easy, but in theory you can use those spikes in the cycles to forward price and therefore not suffer to the degree when prices end up in the rock bottom of the cycle.
Speaker 1:So, rob, just thinking this through, and obviously we're sort of looking at how to avoid some of those dark low levels that you were just mentioning there. I suppose that's what your role as a financial advisor is, isn't it To be sort of working with your clients, working out some of these objectives and, like you were saying before, might be a longer-term approach to managing through those issues, because the sugar market is volatile.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we like to. So, as we said at the introduction, we work individually with growers or with a number of growers that there are clients and, yes, we assist them through that process in terms of making the decisions, A lot of the things we talked about in today's podcast, keeping focused on what they're trying to achieve, and they're all different. Everyone's got different objectives and therefore their willingness or not to take risk in the market is greater or lesser, and that can be from financial objectives. But also we touched a little bit on behaviour. But some people are naturally better risk takers than others. Some are more risk adverse.
Speaker 2:So we don't try and be a one size fits all. We try and work individually with the group that does that, with each individual group around that. So, yes, it principally is just focused on supporting, as I would have an agronomist and an accountant and a bank manager. We're just a risk management advisor and we work in supporting them make those decisions. We make recommendations on how much you should price and at what levels you should price and why, and let's not say that this all works out perfectly every year or whatever else. But we like to take in our business, we like to take a 10-year horizon and we're going to have some of our individual sugar clients now that are not too far off. 20-year relationship, and that's what I call success.
Speaker 1:And just to sort of explain some of the services. I understand you actually place orders on behalf of some of your clients as well. Is that something which you talk about with your clients when you're setting up? What level of service they want from you?
Speaker 2:It really is up to the client. It's probably got to the stage where we prefer to place them really is up to the client. It's probably got to the stage where we prefer to place them because, invariably, what happens then is we'll have a conversation and a grower will say, yep, okay, I'll go and do that. But pricing's not the only thing they're doing in the day. Tractors break down, they've got workers to provide guidance to, or they've got meetings in town or this. There's always something else going on and it gets forgotten about. Now, sometimes forgetting about it works your way, but market goes up the next day and you haven't done anything. That's a benefit. But if the market goes down, you've missed the opportunity.
Speaker 2:So in a lot of cases we prefer to say, okay, this is what we recommend. We'll have a discussion around that with the client. The client will go okay, yes, or modify, or what have you, and we'll say, okay, we'll go away and do those orders for you. Does everyone work that way? No, but the majority will, and that way they know it's being done. We know it's being done and it just keeps it tight, rather than sort of loose and not knowing whether it has been placed or not been placed or because you know, as I said it's. It's fine for me to sit here and talk about, you know, pricing and what people should be doing, but as a grower, it's just one component of a number of different components. They're going to deal through with. The day might be my focus isn't necessarily always their main focus on that particular day.
Speaker 1:So, Rob, one of the things you just mentioned about is not making a decision, and I think certainly there's been some issues around mill performance in some of the districts recently and there's been some pretty adverse weather events which has reduced crops out there. Typically, we haven't seen it go below 70% of production forecast, but there still is quite a lot of reluctance by some growers to use that volume up to 60, 70% that they can price forward or use for committed volumes. What are you seeing on that one?
Speaker 2:I think you're right and whether it's been weather of late or, as you say, in some cases, mill performance or late seasons, the fact that a grower has got to make, generally, a decision to commit to committed pricing at the end of April before they've cut something, I can see that At the end of the day, I probably sit back and look at it and go okay, it's a balance of probabilities. Go back umpteen seasons and find me a season that you didn't produce at least 60%, or find me a season that you didn't produce at least 60%, or find me a season you didn't produce. Even in cyclone seasons, people will still lose 60% or 70%. So I would look at it and go.
Speaker 2:You cannot get rid of risk completely out of your life. You can mitigate it, you can manage it, and manage can mean accepting the risk. By and large, you should be able to commit at least 50 or 60% of your tons and not have a production issue. Is it a guarantee? Absolutely not. No guarantees in this world. But the probability of that causing you a problem is not high. It's quite a low probability and at the end of the day, if it did cause you a problem, maybe it's around that last 2% or 3% that you did, or last 5% you did. It is really only a problem if the market is higher than when you price it. If the market's lower, it's not a problem. In fact, the bigger problem is you didn't get 40% of your crop off. That's the real problem. But from a price risk management point of view, that's not necessarily a big issue all the time, and the marketers these days are pretty good at helping people work around. You know work arounds on that process.
Speaker 1:So it's not I don't think there's been too many washouts or any issues over the last year or so anyway, even if we have had some issues.
Speaker 2:There's no big ones. I would say invariably every year there's a few, for differing reasons. I can't say I've seen one that's been of consequence. Again, not to say that can't happen, but if you've got to focus on what you're doing and look, if you're going out and you're committing to 100% of your crop before you take it off, there's a reasonable chance you're going to have a bit of a production issue. If you commit that at the end of April, to pick a number, maybe it's not a cyclone anymore, maybe it could be a late season or rain or something like that. So, yes, the more production you commit, the higher your production risk at the margin is going to be. So if you go to 100% probably 50-50, you're going to have a problem, depending on your estimate.
Speaker 1:But a lot of the structures that exist today stop growers from doing 100% until the production is there. In most cases, though, isn't it? It's pretty extreme to be able to do 100%.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of marketers that will allow you to go to 100% or near enough to it. I don't have a philosophical problem with that. At the end of the day, as an advisor to an individual grower, we'll grab and use as many tools as we can. Just because the tool's in the toolbox doesn't mean we're going to take it out for a spin, but it gives us the ability if and when we want to, or if the market dictates we can. We want that ability to take it out for a spin.
Speaker 1:So, rob, just to wrap things up, then I'm sure the growers out there would love to hear a couple of hot tips from you on how they could approach their risk management. What sort of tips have you got there?
Speaker 2:Look, I think we've probably covered on a few of them as we've gone along. I think very much. Take a business-focused approach, Really concentrate. Swim in your own lane. Make the decisions for your business, not anyone else's. Keep very focused on that one business, not anyone else's. Keep very focused on that one. Have some kind of a plan. It doesn't need to be formalized Some people like formal written down plans, some don't but have a plan and objectives in mind and that'll go a long way towards being able to build a strategy around that in terms of pricing, but not only in terms of pricing in terms of, you know, pricing is just one, Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2:It's an important aspect. But we would say to our clients yield's number one, price is number two, a close number two, but it's number two. You can't price or sell what you don't have. So it's really part of a whole program about driving your business productivity forward and forward over the long run, not next year or the year after, but putting a business in a position where it's constantly making money, year in, year out, and you're building.
Speaker 1:And Rob, you've been around for a long time. Resilience is a word we sort of bandy around a bit, but the sugar industry in Queensland how are you feeling about the future?
Speaker 2:I'm actually quite positive on it. I think we've got the pricing mechanisms that we've got. We've got some good structures in place. I do think the market outlook I'm optimistic that we're not going to have a big downswing In terms of the global market. I think it's potentially a little bit tighter than what people think. We will find out whether that's right or wrong at the end of the global market. I think it's potentially a little bit tighter than what people think. We will find out whether that's right or wrong at the end of the day. If I look at the cyclical nature of the market, we're a couple of years into a cycle, which means in a couple of years' time I'm looking for an upswing. Will it come or not? Who knows? But that's what I'm looking for. It doesn't look like our currency is going to head significantly higher in at least the short term. So I think from a price perspective I think from just a broad industry perspective and returns on a business, I'm quite positive into the end of the decade. For it I think there's good opportunities.
Speaker 1:That wraps up the July 2025 Marketing Information Service Update. Thanks very much, Rob, for joining us and we'll look forward to catching up with you again soon.
Speaker 2:Yep, thanks for having me, dougal, and thank you for those that have tuned in if I can use that word to the podcast.
Speaker 1:And for more information, please check out the Cane Growers website. Thank you very much. Please note that Cane Gross does not have an Australian financial services license, so all the information contained in this presentation is general information only.