Australian Food and Fibre (AFF) kicks off 10th ginning season at Hay

Australian Food and Fibre’s Geoff Lucas and Heidi Stephens expect this year’s ginning season to break all records. Image: The Riverine Grazier / Krista Schade.

By Krista Schade

The Cobb Highway cotton gin, operated by Australian Food and Fibre (AFF) has entered its tenth year of processing.

Ginning began earlier this week, and the team expects it to be the biggest season yet.

In what Geoff Lucas described as a “massive maintenance season” upgrades have been made to buildings and machinery, to streamline operations.

In 2024, the ginning season ran for five months and processed 45,000 round modules into 199,000 finished bales, making 2024 one of the Hay gin's biggest years.

The recent inclusion of the Kooba aggregation into AFF’s agricultural holdings means this finished bales figure is expected to be exceeded this year.

Since 2015, the Hay gin has processed 1.2 million bales. That’s enough to produce a whopping 258 million pairs of jeans or 1,440 million tee shirts.

Construction of the gin was completed in May 2015, after two years of planning, and 11 months of construction.

The first sod was turned on June 3, 2014 by then Hay mayor Bill Sheaffe.

During the build 13,500 cubic metres of dirt was moved, to accommodate the series of buildings.

The processing building alone spans almost 5,000 square metres and 350 people were involved in construction of the complex.

The five-stand gin was constructed with the capability to process 250,000 bales annually.

At the time, Hay Cotton Gin was owned and operated by Auscott, who disclosed at the time that the facility cost “tens of millions to construct”.

The Australian later reported that figure to be $40 million.

Auscott was one of the first cotton producers in Australia, having been founded in 1963 by US-based J.G. Boswell Company.

Led by Managing Director Joe Robinson, AFF is a longstanding Australian producer of cotton, with headquarters in Moree.

AFF is a joint venture between the Robinson family and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), one of Canada’s largest pension investment funds.

The company acquired Auscott in 2021, including its properties, ginning, warehousing and marketing operations.

There are six AFF cotton gins in operation across NSW - located at Hay, Moree, Trangie, Warren, Narrabri and North Bourke - along with a cotton classing facility in Sydney.