Macadamia production expected to double after crushing price struggles

Three years ago macadamia nut grower Graham Wessling was struggling to break even but now he believes the industry has turned around.

“We’re coming off the back of COVID and some lower prices but we’re pulling out of that,” he said.

Australia is on track to almost double the annual volume of macadamias it produces in the next five years, according to peak body Australian Macadamia Society (AMS).

Global production is also surging and Mr Wessling, who manages 1,200 hectares of trees in New South Wales and Queensland, says consumers are hungry for the native nut.

“I think there’s such a huge taste for macadamias worldwide that we can always feed that market,” he said.

“It’s up to the [AMS] marketing team to keep in front and make sure they’re doing their job and able to sell the great product we’ve got.

“There is a lot of talk about over-planting — I don’t see that as being the case.”

In 2024 Australian farmers harvested 57,000 tonnes of macadamias while struggling with prices at or below the cost of production.

A crop of almost 100,000 tonnes is forecast by 2029.

‘Great opportunities’

AMS chief executive Clare Hamilton-Bate said if the forecast proved accurate it represented significant growth.

“That is just a theoretical number based on orchards in the ground and theoretical yields,” she said.

The World Macadamia Organisation estimates global production will grow by about 10 per cent each year.

Ms Hamilton-Bate said prices and demand were recovering from the sharp declines of 2022, but she hoped more consumers would embrace the native nut.

She said the industry was working to secure new markets and solidify current ones such as India to prevent another glut.

“There’s some great opportunities there with the massive population of nut-eating communities, plant-based diets, [who are] familiar with many nuts,” Ms Hamilton-Bate said.

There are 44,000ha of macadamia trees in Australia and plantings have more than doubled in eight years.

Seventy per cent of the national crop is now grown in Queensland and the remainder in NSW.

“Bundaberg itself is at 50 per cent of the national crop and only two thirds of those trees are bearing, and there are new plantings still going in,” Ms Hamilton-Bate said.

Planting confidence

It takes at least five years for a commercial macadamia tree to start producing.

Johan Oosthuizen manages a 260ha orchard in the Bundaberg region and had 30ha of trees bear fruit for the first time last year.

“We’ve actually planted out all the land that we have available to us, so we’ll have to wait [to see what prices do] if there’s any further purchases,” he said.

“[Prices] certainly do need to improve a little bit more to keep that confidence there, keep our development going.”

Even with the pricing challenges, farmers from outside the established growing areas are exploring entering the industry.

Henrik Christiansen is the only grower harvesting macadamias in the non-traditional growing area of Rockhampton in central Queensland.

But he said with the new Rookwood Weir providing water security to growers, he would not be the only one for long.

“That’s enabled a lot of development,” Mr Christiansen said.

“We’re expanding a little bit ourselves and there is also a new entrant in the area.”

The new entrant is Rural Funds Management, which is converting cattle grazing land to irrigated horticulture with the intention of planting at least 400ha worth of macadamia trees.

Mr Christiansen said he was not concerned about a glut because macadamias represented about 2.5 per cent of the global tree nut market.

“We’re only really exporting to seven to eight markets globally in large volumes,” he said.

“We’ve got a lot of uptick in demand that we can work on.