This morning one of the juice clarifier tanks at CSR’s Pioneer sugar mill collapsed also damaging a second tank.

There were no serious injuries as a result of the incident. Two employees were taken to hospital to be treated for shock, one other employee was treated for a minor burn to her foot.

The mill has been shut down and most employees have been sent home for the day other than a small clean up crew.

CSR is currently investigating the cause of the incident and has mobilised a team to restore production.

While it is too early to estimate when production can re-commence, CSR believes this incident will not have a material effect on earnings in its Sugar business.

The Pioneer Mill is one of 7 mills owned by CSR. CSR crushes approximately 14 million tonnes of sugar cane annually. Of this total, approximately 8 million tonnes is crushed in the Burdekin region where Pioneer is one of 4 CSR Mills. Pioneer typically crushes around 1.7 million tonnes of sugar cane annually.

CSR is working to restore production as soon as possible at Pioneer mill. In the interim, arrangements are being made to divert cane from this mill area to other CSR mills in the Burdekin. The crushing season has just commenced in the past week and is scheduled to run until November. During this time we expect to restore production at Pioneer.