When we think of sugar production in Australia, we think of the cane fields that stretch from Mossman in North Queensland to Grafton in the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales. But, for five decades early in the 20th century, sugar was also produced in Victoria. It wasn’t made from cane. It was beet sugar.
Sugar made from beets is chemically identical to cane sugar, although it can taste slightly different and behave differently in some cooking processes. It is the primary source of sugar for many European Union countries, including France and Germany, with significant beet sugar industries also in Russia and the United States.
Interest in beet sugar began in Australia in the 1860s. Newspaper reports in all the southern and western colonies suggested that the development of a local sugar industry could avoid the need to import cane sugar from Queensland. The by-products – the beet tops and the pulp that remained after the sugar was extracted – would also be useful as stock feed. Most of the proposed ventures came to nothing.
In 1866, a small factory was erected near Geelong, but difficulties arose, and it was converted to a distillery. A further business in nearby Anakie began operation in 1872, but failed after two years. A few years later, Mr Murray Ross built a new factory at Rosstown (now the Melbourne suburb of Carnegie) and removed the machinery from Geelong to his factory. Beets were grown under market garden conditions on small areas. Because of insufficient quantities of beets and Ross’s financial woes, this venture also proved unsuccessful. Further experiments in beet growing were carried out at Narre Warren, Warrnambool and Maffra.
In 1866, the Victorian Government passed the Beet Sugar Works Act, making funds available for the establishment of sugar factories. Quick to take advantage of this was the Braunschweigische Maschinenbauanstalt (Braunschweig Mechanical Engineering Institute) of Germany. Forming a joint-stock company, in 1897 they opened a sugar factory with modern machinery, partly German management and German workers.
The enterprise failed. There just weren’t enough beets produced by local growers to make it viable. This was partly owing to drought conditions and partly to lack of knowledge and insufficient training of growers. An article in the German-language paper, the Deutsch-Australische Post, deplored the laxity of the local labour force:
It is a major obstacle to Australian beet cultivation that the English, who are by far the majority, are not a fan of hard work, especially field work, that women’s and children’s work is not popular in foreign territory and that foreign (coloured) workers are not allowed.
After two years, the operation closed down, with considerable financial loss to the original investors. The Victorian Government took over the factory, which remained idle until 1910. It re-opened after advice from Dr Walter Maxwell, who had been commissioned by the Victorian Minister of Agriculture to enquire into the growth of the industry in the United States.
Maxwell’s analysis suggested that, while the equipment in the factory was thoroughly up-to-date, the original company had made a significant error in the scale of the operation. Too many employees were hired and the beets were grown by syndicates dependent on inferior labour. He recommended that small farmers be induced to produce the crops, and that the initially modest output of the factory be gradually scaled up as the operation became more successful.
Growers received government assistance. They were supplied with seed imported from Germany, with payment deferred until after their first harvest. The Salvation Army was tasked with supplying seasonal workers through its free labour bureau, connecting unemployed people with jobs.
This time, the operation met with more success, which continued into the 1940s. At its peak, in 1940, the Maffra factory produced 6220 tons of beet sugar, from 41, 890 tons of beet. However, World War II had a serious impact on the industry. It caused labour shortages, and governments prioritised vegetable growing rather than sugar production. Before the war, there were around 240 beet growers in the district. By 1945, there were just 32.
The Victorian Government announced that the Maffra factory would be closed for the 1945 season. It was reopened by the Labor government in 1947, but an enquiry in 1948 found that most farmers were losing interest in beet growing. The shortage of itinerant workers, degradation of the land, and competition from more profitable industries were cited as reasons for this. “The new economy of the 40-hour week and high wages has stolen the men that used to wander the country doing seasonal work,” the factory manager told The Sun News Pictorial.
In 1949, the factory was sold. It marked the end of the beet sugar industry in Australia. “Closing down of the Maffra factory left Victorian housewives at the mercy of the Colonial Sugar Refining monopoly,” lamented Tribune, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, characterising the closure as another example of “the crazy character of capitalism”.