Facts and Figures

About the benchmarking project

The benchmarking project is supporting improved productivity and profitability within the Australian macadamia industry. The current project builds on previous benchmarking and best practice work conducted since 2001.

Yield, quality and planting information has been collected annually from macadamia farms throughout Australia since 2009. These data are provided either directly by growers or by processors on their behalf. Cost of production data has also been collected annually since 2013.

Each season all benchmarking participants receive a confidential, personalised interim and final report that compares their individual farm performance with the average performance of similar farms based on a range of criteria including region, locality, farm size, management structure, irrigation status and tree age. These reports highlight individual and average farm performance trends over multiple seasons.

This industry report has been produced to provide growers, processors, consultants, investors and other industry stakeholders with a summary of yield, quality and cost of production trends within the Australian macadamia industry.

Scope and coverage

This report summarises macadamia farm yield and quality results for the 2009–2020 seasons and production costs for 2013–2020. Many of the yield benchmarks presented are based on tonnes of nutin-shell (NIS) or saleable kernel (SK) per bearing hectare, as these are widely accepted measures of orchard productivity

A total of 273 bearing farms submitted yield and quality data for the 2020 season. These farms totalled 10,851 hectares (10,098 bearing) and produced approximately 29,464 tonnes of NIS at 10% moisture content. This represents approximately 59% of the industry’s total production in 2020, based on the Australian Macadamia Society’s estimate of 50,300 tonnes of NIS at 10% moisture content (published December 2020).

Find out about yield, quality and costs of production trends. DOWNLOAD THE REPORT NOW.