We’ve got our bagasse piles tucked in for the wet season.

It’s no simple feat, involving two excavators working in harmony to lift and drag about 200 metres of tarp up and over our piles of biofuel, but it’s an important task in our role as a renewable energy provider in Queensland.

Our team at Pioneer Mill has just finished covering five massive piles of bagasse, which are each about 40 metres wide and between 150 and 200 metres long.

The covers (or tarps), which are manufactured in Australia, measure 24 x 55 metres and are sewn together by the team to create a “mega-tarp”, matching the length of each bagasse pile prior to lifting in place.

We use an electric stitching machine to join up to six tarps together for each bagasse pile. The stitches are specially-designed to be pulled apart easily, so that single sections of the tarp can be removed as needed, effectively unwrapping the covered bagasse pile as sections are required.

Pioneer Mill is home to the largest biomass generator in the country and each year, together with our seven other sugar mills, exports enough renewable electricity to power about 80,000 homes for a year.