Mackay Sugar chairman, Eddie Westcott, is optimistic the region's farmers will throw their support behind the plan to restructure the co-operative.
Quite simply, he sees it as crunch time for the business.
Just as growers realise the need to diversify their income, Mackay Sugar and its four mills are looking to a future that will be strengthened through diversification, he says.
But according to Mr Westcott, these changes can only be effectively brought about by changing to an unlisted public company from the current co-operative structure.
Such a change would allow the company to access further capital through grower investment and further allow them more borrowing power.
Thus it would be hoped to springboard the plans for an electricity co-generation facility which is estimated to cost between $100-$110 million.
As Mr Westcott explains it, such infrastructure would serve to strengthen the future for cane in the region and remove the dependence on the vagaries of the world sugar market.
With the electricity entering the domestic grid, the market would be free of the troubles of global exchange rates and low sugar prices pressured from the likes of Brazil.
The project would likely require $15-$20 million of grower investment but Mr Westcott believes this money could be raised despite the recent string of hard years in the local industry.
"It isn't money directly invested into the sugar industry. It is into green power which everybody believes has a stable and consistent income in the future," he says.
He adds that the beauty of the co-generation plan is that it allows for diversification while allowing growers to keep doing what they do best: growing cane.
"Our farms are too small to change to cattle properties, and topical fruits don't seem to do well here.
"Vegetable crops are very variable in income and if we all got into them we would destroy the market.
"We want people still growing cane, but increasing their income from each cane plant."
Before the cogeneration can get off the ground, though, it will require the successful restructure of Mackay Sugar.
Growers currently have postal ballots to vote on the changes, with the deadline of July 4.
A previous attempt at the changes saw only 65pc support, while 75pc is required to instigate the change.
Mr Westcott says this time they have alleviated the main concern about growers losing control of Mackay Sugar to people who no longer grew cane.
The concern was that growers who 'sold out' of cane could keep their shares and then still have a say in the future of Mackay Sugar.
But, under the new arrangement, such a scenario would see these investor shareholders without a vote in the company once they no longer supplied cane. Only grower shareholders would be able to vote.
"We can't survive without growers supplying cane to us," Mr Westcott says.
"We are moving away from a straight sugar producing business to a sugar and energy producing business.
"We need to work together for that and the mills and the growers are so intertwined that one can't exist without the other."
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