Sugar Australia Maintenance Works
Perched nearly 10 storeys above the sprawling industrial anatomy of Sugar Australia’s port facilities at Mackay, Grant Painters foreman Mick Hudson steadies himself inside the basket of a boom lift – his noise-cancelling headset buzzing softly with instructions from a ground-based spotter.
Today he’s on a mission to singlehandedly apply 160 litres of paint to massive steel galleries – six-foot wide pipes conveying refined sugar from one of Australia’s largest sugar producers to waiting ships.
The arms of the boom snake between these hulking structures with surgical precision.
The panorama from the basket offers a sense of exhilaration few people ever experience.
“The sheer height can be quite unnerving,” Mick admits. “The further you extend the boom, the more movement you feel.
“I took a couple of shots from up there and texted them to my mates – I told them I was wish I was fishing.”
Up and over: Navigating the obstacles was not for the faint-hearted.
The man who feared ladders
The story above took place between October and November, 2024 – just before central Queensland’s wet season closed in.
It’s a far cry from his early years, as someone who was reluctant to even climb up eight foot ladders.
Fast forward two decades and he’s now orchestrating painting operations from a habitat more natural to seagulls than humans.
The work formed part of a maintenance campaign by Grant Painters at two of Mackay Sugar’s milling sites – an essential effort to protect one of Australia’s longest-running and most critical manufacturing assets.
Sugar Australia is a giant of Australian industry – and this facility doesn’t stop for long. “Productivity” is the buzzword for the day.
Surgical precision: Grant Painters foreman Mick Hudson guides the boom between Sugar Australia’s pipelines.
On this job, Mick guided the arms of the telescopic boom through the galleries, often needing to double back and reposition mid-air.
“Because of the limited access and tight timeframe on this job, we had to be thoroughly prepared,” said Stuart Grant, owner of Grant Painters.
“A lot of planning and research went into selecting a boom with the right specifications – one that could handle the height, the reach, and the precision we needed.
“It wasn’t a case of just turning up with gear; we had to tailor our entire approach to suit the complexity of the site.
”You can see in the photos how close the clearances are between the arms of the boom and the galleries.”
The challenge wasn’t just physical – it was technical. The salt-laden air from the nearby sea meant surfaces had to be pressure-washed – sometimes just hours before painting.
The heat and humidity were relentless, hastening the cure time of the viscous epoxy coatings and threatening to harden the paint inside the gun before he could finish a pass.
Every 40 litres, Mick was forced to descend to ground level to disassemble and clean the spray gun using thinners – an hour-long cycle of paint, descend, clean, reset, and rise again.
“We started on the lower parts of the galleries, and as our workflow and systems got better, we moved to the high sections.”
The tools and the ingenuity behind the operation
To handle the thick Jotun epoxy mastic and hardtop system, Mick relied on a refurbished Wagner 207 diaphragm spray gun – chosen for its airless design that kept overspray to a minimum.
But that alone wasn’t enough. The set-up required three hoses joined together and stretching nearly 40 metres long rigged with an improvised pressure system. A 3/8-inch feed hose tapered through to a 1/4-inch top hose to force paint through with enough pressure to atomize the coating.
A 321 spray tip was used for applying the undercoat and a 419 for the top coat, at the end of a six-foot wand (which minimised the need to keep repositioning the boom).
Over-riding conventional wisdom
What made this project particularly remarkable was its defiance of industry norms. According to conventional wisdom, an airless spray system simply doesn’t work with thick epoxy coatings – especially not on this scale.
“Most painters will tell you that an airless setup won’t work in this situation,” said Mick. “But it became critical to the success of the project.
“Rolling the structure would’ve been far too slow to meet the tight window we were working with.
“We refined our workflow to a fine art, which was also crucial.”
About the Project
Client: Sugar Australia (Australia’s second-largest sugar manufacturer)
Contractor: Grant Painters
Location: Mackay, Queensland
Scope: Protective coating of 6-foot round pipe galleries at the mill’s port site
Challenges:
- 40m height/10-storey elevation
- Intricate boom lift navigation
- Heat, humidity and rapid cure times
- Salt contamination risk from nearby sea
- Precision spraying with custom rig