Growers are hoping to return to cutting whole-of-crop cane around mid-September to continue providing trash to fuel the NSW Sugar Milling Cooperative’s innovative cogeneration plant at Broadwater, which will supply electricity for its own operation and to sell back to the State grid.

The Co-operative also has a cogeneration plant at Condong on the Tweed River where growers this season are harvesting 80pc of their crop green.

Wet weather, the monumental move to cogeneration and unexpected mill hiccups have put the Tweed and Richmond crushing season three weeks behind, while the Clarence harvest remains on track.

Corrosion forced a dismantling of the Broadwater mill’s 12-year-old boiler stack, or chimney, and the only available replacement was in Kununurra, Western Australia.

It had to be cut into four sections and trucked to Broadwater, which put crushing on hold for more than a week.

While average temperatures across the Northern Rivers have been lower this winter, winds have prevented the big frosts that last year wiped out significant amounts of cane.

Ongoing rain in July, however, held up harvesting, further contributing to the schedule slow-down following the delay of the start of the crushing season due to heavy rain in late May and early June.

NSW is expected to crush around two million tonnes of cane this season.

NSW Cane Growers Association chairman Vince Castle said despite the minor setback in the Richmond, the shift to whole-of-crop harvesting for cogeneration was going well and had good grower support.

"The commitment from growers to doing the hard yards in terms of harvesting difficult cane has been strong," he said.

"It is likely the phasing out of systematic burning will take several years and given what a big change it is for the industry, what we have achieved so far is a good average."

Meanwhile, the co-operative’s new Chief Executive Officer Chris Connors has had a busy first two weeks on the job.

Mr Connors is the former general manager of the Proserpine Sugar Milling Co-operative in Queensland.

Outgoing CEO Greg Messiter finishes up on August 29.