Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) in Auckland Sugar Factory, Fiji and Australia

New Zealand

Throughout most of the 19th century, all sugar products in New Zealand had to be imported; wishing to improve New Zealand's self-sufficiency, in 1882 the government offered a bounty to the first company to produce sugar locally. Already interested in business prospects in New Zealand, the Australian Colonial Sugar Refining Company had investigated possible sites in New Zealand and purchased 160 acres of farm land in Birkenhead. This was later expanded to 450 acres.

Australia

Founded in Sydney in 1855 as the Colonial Sugar Refining Company at the Old Sugarmill, the company expanded into milling cane in Queensland and Fiji from the 1870s. It quickly became the most important miller and refiner in Australasia, with a virtual monopoly on Queensland and Fiji sugar production up to, respectively, 1989 and 1972. It also sold by-products of the sugar industry, from molasses to ethanol. In 2010, CSR sold its sugar and ethanol business, which had been given the name Sucrogen in 2009, to the Singaporean company Wilmar. As of 2015, the business is known as Wilmar Sugar.

Fiji

The decision to enter into the production of raw sugar and sugar cane plantation was due to the Company's desire to shield itself from fluctuations in the price of raw sugar needed to run its refining operations. In May 1880 Fiji's Colonial Secretary John Bates Thurston persuaded the Colonial Sugar Refining Company to extend their operations into Fiji by making available 2,000 acres of land to establish plantations.


Ships at the Colonial Sugar Company's refinery. Sugar cane from Fiji was delivered to the Colonial Sugar Refinery at Auckland, where it was processed into sugar. This 19th-century photograph shows ships anchored near the refinery.

The Colonial Sugar Refining Company was founded on 1 January 1855 by Edward Knox. It was formed in Sydney. It operated in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales.

In 1882 the company began sugar production in Fiji with crushing at the Nausori mill.

In 1886, Rarawai mill in Fiji, built by CSR for the New Zealand Sugar Company, began crushing.

In 1894, CSR's Labasa mill in Fiji began crushing. In 1903, Lautoka mill in Fiji began operations.

In 1906 the remaining Kanaka workforce were deported from Australia.

In 1915 the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (Fiji and New Zealand) Limited was formed to take over the assets of the company outside Australia.

This subsidiary was liquidated in 1923 and the assets returned to CSR Co Limited. In the same year, the Queensland state government signed an agreement with CSR to refine all of that state's sugar production. In 1920 the indentured labour of Indians in Fiji was cancelled on Government decree. CSR introduced a tenant-farming system in Fiji in 1924 as a possible solution to its labour problems. The company bought the Penang mill, Fiji, in 1926.

In 2010 Sucrogen formed, comprising of CSR Mills, Ethanol and the Sweetener Group (Sugar Australia & New Zealand Sugar Company) CSR

Sucrogen was sold for A$1.75 billion to Wilmar International Limited in 2010.

Wilmar International is Australia's largest manufacturer and exporter of raw sugar, the largest producer of molasses, and the largest generator of renewable energy from biomass.

It owns three sugar refineries in Australia and New Zealand, in a joint venture with Mackay Sugar Limited. Sugar Australia and New Zealand Sugar businesses manufacture a range of sugar and sweetener products under the CSR and Chelsea brands.

Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC) - Timeline

Ballad of the Stonegut Sugar Works

This is a poem from James K. Baxter called 'Ballad of the Stonegut Sugar Works' about when he worked at the Chelsea sugar refinery in Auckland in 1969. Hone Tuwhare found the job for him, but he was soon fired. The poem is reproduced from the 'independent socialist' magazine New Zealand Monthly Review of Dec./Jan. 1970. The sugar works is still open, although many of the jobs have been mechanised.

Oh in the Stonegut Sugar Works
The floors are black with grime
As I found out when I worked there
Among the dirt and slime;
I think they must have built it
In Queen Victoria's time.
 
I had the job of hosing down
The hoick and sludge and grit
For the sweet grains of sugar dust
That had been lost in it
For the Company to boil again
And put it on your plate;
 
For all the sugar in the land
Goes through that dismal dump
And all the drains run through the works
Into a filthy sump,
And then they boil it up again
For the money in each lump.
 
The bricks are held together by dirt
And the machines by rust
But I will work in any place
To earn myself a crust,
But work and never bow the head
As any grown man must.
 
And though along those slippery floors
A man might break a leg
And the foul stink of diesel fumes
Flows through the packing shed
And men in clouds of char dust move
Like the animated dead.
 
To work beside your fellow men
Is good in the worst place,
To call a man your brother
And look him in the face,
And sweat wash the sweat away
And joke at the world's disgrace.
 
And sweet on Auckland harbour
The waves ride in to land
Where you can sit at smoko
With the coal heaps close at hand
And watch the free white gulls a while
That on the jetty stand.
 
But the Clerk and the Slavedriver
Are birds of another kind,
For the clerk sits in his high glass cage
With money on his mind,
And the Slavedriver down below
Can't call a slave a friend.
 
Instead they have (or nearly all)
The Company for a wife,
A strange kind of bedmate
That sucks away their life
On a little mad dirt track
Of chiselling and strife.
 
But work is work, and any man
Must learn to sweat a bit
And say politely, 'O.K., mate',
To a foremen's heavy wit
And stir himself and only take
Five minutes for a sh*t.
 
But the sweat of work and the sweat of fear
Are different things to have;
The first is the sweat of a working man
And the second of a slave,
And the sweat of fear turns any place
Into a living grave.
 
When the head chemist came to me
Dressed in his white coat
I thought he might give me a medal
For I had a swollen foot
Got by shovelling rock-hard sugar
Down a dirty chute.
 
But no: 'I hear your work's all right',
The chemist said to me,
'But you took seven minutes
To go to the lavatory;
I timed it with my little watch
My mother gave to me.'
 
'Oh thank you, thank you', I replied
'I hope your day goes well'.
I watched the cold shark in his eye
Circling for the kill;
I did not bow the head to him
So he wished me ill.
 
The foreman took another tack,
He'd grin and joke with us,
But every day he had a tale
Of sorrow for the Boss;
I did not bow the head to him
And this became his cross.
 
And once as he climbed a ladder
I said (perhaps unkindly) -
'I'm here to work, not to drop my tweeds
At the sight of a Boss; you see,
The thing is, I'm not married
To the Sugar Company.'
 
As for the Company Union,
It was a tired thing;
The Secretary and Manager
Each wore a wedding ring;
They would often walk together
Picking crocuses in spring.
 
You will guess I got the bullet,
And it was no surprise,
For the chemists from their cages
Looked down with vulture eyes
To see if they could spot a man
Buttoning up his flies.
 
It's hard to take your pay and go
Up the winding road
Because you speak to your brother man
And keep your head unbowed,
In a place where the dismal stink of fear
Hangs heavy as a cloud.
 
The men who sweep the floors are men
(My story here must end);
But the clerk and the slavedriver
Will never have a friend;
To shovel sh*t and eat it
Are different in the end.

The Girmit history is written in detail here.

References:

Colonial Sugar Refinery - CSR  
Kanaka Workers  
Islander Labourers  
Australian South Sea Islanders - Discrimination  
CSR Sells Sugar Business to Wilmar International  
Wilmar International  
CSR History Graph  
Sucrogen History  
About - Chelsea Sugar New Zealand  
History - Chelsea Sugar New Zealand  
Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC) - Timeline  
Ballad of the Stonegut Sugar Works