Our history

Over the last 155 years, we have grown to become the largest domestic supplier and user of Australian raw sugar. We are also the largest exporter of Australian refined sugar. This brief timeline shows how we became the market leading business we are today:

• 1855 - The Colonial Sugar Refining Company was established in Sydney to refine imported raw sugar for the domestic market
• 1857 - The refining operations were expanded to Melbourne
• 1870 – The company began sugar milling in northern New South Wales
• 1873 – The business first distilled ethanol from molasses in NSW
• 1884 – We began refining in New Zealand
• 1887 – The company was incorporated and ran in that form for more than eighty years
• 1923 – The business signed the first of sixty-six agreements with the Queensland Government to refine and market the sugar crop
• 1973 – The business name was changed to CSR Limited
• 1989 – Commercial refining resumed after an import embargo and administered price tariff were repealed
• 1998 - A joint venture - Sugar Australia - was formed between CSR Limited (50%), Mackay Sugar Co-operative Association Limited (25%), and ED&F Mann (25%)
• 2004 - CSR purchased ED&F Mann's share of the joint venture, to then hold 75% 
• 2009 – A new move to separate the sugar and energy business away from the building products unit, and Sucrogen is born
• 2010 - CSR Limited sold its Sugar and Renewable Energy business, Sucrogen, to Wilmar International Limited.