Felicity Ogilvie reported this story on Tuesday, November 1, 2011 12:50:00

ELEANOR HALL: A Queensland company has started making an alternative to flour from sugar cane.



The product is being extracted from the fibre that is usually a waste product of sugar production.



And the sugar cane industry says it's possible that it could become a new source of food in developing countries; as Felicity Ogilvie reports.



FELICITY OGILVIE: Queensland is one of the world's largest exporters of raw sugar, but one company in the town of Ayr, near Townsville, isn't using sugar cane to make sugar.



Instead Gordon Edwards is using fibre from the sugar cane to make an alternative to flour.



GORDON EDWARDS: We essentially take sugar cane billets in the same manner the sugar cane mills do. And then we take the billets and we shred and diffuse the sugar out of it. So essentially, we smash it down into small pieces and remove the sugar with water so there's no chemicals used. And then we dry and we mill it down into a product which is about half the size of flour.



FELICITY OGILVIE: So it's described as an alternative to flour; what does it look like and what does it taste like.



GORDON EDWARDS: It looks like flour but it doesn't taste like flour. It's got very little taste, no sweetness at all.



FELICITY OGILVIE: Mr Edwards has started selling the sugar cane fibre in Australia, and is exporting it to Japan and New Zealand.



GORDON EDWARDS: It becomes a flour substitute for celiacs and other people that can't, that have gluten intolerances. But it also becomes a functional health claim for companies that want to put it into products as a part replacement for flour so that they can do fibre claims.



But one of the other things we've found is that small good manufacturers are starting to use it in their sausages in their mince because they can a) replace their flour and b) it holds and binds a lot more water so that the product itself, they have reduced reduction costs.



FELICITY OGILVIE: The sugar cane industry is watching with interest because Mr Edwards has taken a waste product and turned it into food.



The chief executive of the industry body Canegrowers, Steve Greenwood, says other people have tried to make a flour alternative from cane sugar before, but he believes this is the first time in the world that the product has become commercially viable.



Mr Greenwood says at the moment most Australian sugar producers burn the fibre from the cane to generate electricity, and they'll be waiting to see if it's more lucrative to turn the fibre into food.



STEVE GREENWOOD: Where this goes in the future will depend on, you know, how commercially attractive that is. And if it, indeed, if it's more financially rewarding to sell it as a food product, I dare say that's where the industry will head. But at the moment most of that product, the bagasse used for cogeneration. So we'll just have to wait and see, we'll have to see how the market develops.



FELICITY OGILVIE: He says there's an opportunity to take the Australian invention and use the flour alternative in developing countries as another food source.



STEVE GREENWOOD: The good thing about sugarcane, it's grown in most developing countries around the world, typically in tropical areas. And so, look, if this proves to be a viable and a commercial product, which it looks quite positive, indeed it's something that could exported around the world and that technology could be applied in developing nations and that's very attractive.



FELICITY OGILVIE: The Queensland company that is producing the flour alternative says it's already discussing how to make the fibre product with sugar producers in Costa Rica. And it's hoping to take the sugarcane fibre technology worldwide.



ELEANOR HALL: Felicity Ogilvie.