{"id":751886,"date":"2026-06-22T01:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T01:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/751886\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T01:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T01:20:18","slug":"australias-macadamia-production-area-more-than-doubles-as-orchards-expand-up-east-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/751886\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s macadamia production area more than doubles as orchards expand up east coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia’s macadamia production area continues to expand, with more than 8,000 trees planted annually over five years in north Queensland.<\/p>\n

But that increase in production is not expected to bring down the supermarket cost of Australia’s most expensive nut, with domestic and international demand remaining strong.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Andrew Cross is harvesting his first macadamia crop after starting to transition from sugar cane five years ago. (ABC News: Brooke Tindall)<\/p>\n

Andrew Cross, farmer and area manager for MH Premium Farms in the Burdekin, about an hour south of Townsville, is having his first commercial harvest this year.<\/p>\n

“It’s a bit of nervousness to see the yield and that come through,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So, to put the harvesters in and [see] the yield come off is very, very comforting.”<\/p>\n

\"Macadamias<\/p>\n

Macadamias fall before they are harvested. (ABC News: Brooke Tindall)<\/p>\n

Mr Cross started transitioning sugarcane country to macadamias about five years ago.<\/p>\n

“The value of permanent plantings has very much proven itself to be a stable, high-value thing if we can make an operational profit on it,” he said.<\/p>\n

MH Premium Farms owns 16 farms in south-east Queensland, and is continuing to expand with macadamias in the Burdekin region, planting more than 8,000 trees a year over the past five years.<\/p>\n

“We only started off with 8,000 trees in the first planting, just edged our way in to see if they would grow and how much they would produce,” Mr Cross said.<\/p>\n

“So far, we haven’t had any surprises and it’s going well.”<\/p>\n

Potential for further expansion<\/p>\n

Agronomist Courtney Richards said she saw potential for more growers to jump on board the macadamia boom.<\/p>\n

\"Neat<\/p>\n

This macadamia orchard was once sugar cane. (ABC News: Brooke Tindall)<\/p>\n

“They’re very different, obviously, going from a row-cropping situation into a permanent tree-cropping situation,” Ms Richards said.<\/p>\n

“But we’ve proven that we can do it [by] asking the right questions and leaning on those people in the industry who have got the knowledge.”<\/p>\n

She said it had been trial and error to adapt Bundaberg growing methods to the Burdekin’s climate and soil types.<\/p>\n

“That has certainly been a big part of the challenge.”<\/p>\n

Consumption remains strong<\/p>\n

Australia produces 50,000 tonnes of macadamias each year across 48,000 hectares of orchards.<\/p>\n

Australian Macadamia Society industry development manager Leoni Kojetin said the expansion of growing areas had been rapid.<\/p>\n

“We have more than doubled the production area for macadamias in the last decade,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Macadamias have a green shell before they turn brown. (ABC News: Brooke Tindall)<\/p>\n

But she did not expect to see that bring down the price of Australia’s most expensive nut in the face of strong domestic and international consumption.<\/p>\n

“More Australians eat macadamias than anyone else in the world,” Ms Kojetin said.<\/p>\n

About 75 per cent of Australian macadamias are exported to 40 different countries, including the growing market in India, with which Australia recently signed a free trade agreement.<\/p>\n

“Worldwide expansion of macadamias is happening much faster than we are expanding in Australia,” Ms Kotejin said.<\/p>\n

But she was not not concerned about the market being saturated, saying the quality of the Australian product gave it a competitive edge against other global producers.<\/p>\n

“Australia is the natural home for macadamias,” she said.<\/p>\n

“When you look at size, when you look at the amount of kernel that you get in each nut, and when you look at the taste, the texture, we get a very good-quality crop from its natural home.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s macadamia production area continues to expand, with more than 8,000 trees planted annually over five years in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,98284,26733,350603],"class_list":["post-751886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-macadamia","tag-nuts","tag-sugar-cane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}