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May at Mission Beach

May at Mission Beach

Posted by Ruth Medd on 6th Jun 2025

Charley's Mission Beach Plantation

Glorious Mt Edna plantation - May 2025

Since my last visit to Mission Beach there have been several developments 

    1. Charley’s has finally installed its Elevation cooling tunnel (from Boscolo, Italy), part funded by the 2022 Federal Government energy efficient communities grant.  
    1. The grant was for reducing energy consumption and improving business efficiency. 
    2. Our proposal was to eliminate the use of high energy consuming refrigerators as well as improving chocolate bar throughput
    3. Elevation arrived some months ago, but nothing is ever simple in FNQ with rats eating the rubber hoses, the equipment needing casters, several visits from scarce FNQ electricians and finally waiting for a fine day to safely manoeuver Elevate into the MMU factory.

                Elevation cooling machine         Elevation cooling machine

    2.    Charley’s driveway

    Lots of things got washed away in FNQ this wet season, including Charley’s driveway (used by visitors and staff to access the factory complex), which ended up on the Bruce Highway – from where it was shoveled in the pouring rain by our staff – one shoveling and the other as lookout for vehicles. We received a small Qld government grant to repair the driveway. 

    3. Smooth Milk Choc

    Chocolate makers are all under pressure from the rising cocoa price. Solutions on offer vary from making cocoa like material from plants, vegetables, putting in less cocoa and in this example putting is so much less cocoa that it’s no longer eligible to be labelled Chocolate.

    The FAO Standard for Chocolate and Chocolate Products Codex Stan 87 - 1981 Adopted in 1981. Revision: 2003. Amendment: 2016 govern how much cocoa must be in a product before it can be labelled as Chocolate – 25% is the minimum. 

    Our board meeting has a new products and market intelligence item.  We enjoy tasting our new product ideas. In addition, this time, we sampled a supermarket find ‘Nestle Golden Rough - Smoother Milk Choc with Coconut’.  To my taste it was not very nice at all.

           

     3.  Mission Beach redevelopment

    Usually, I mention the progress of the Cassowary land bridge but this time I checked out the Mission Beach Village  redevelopment, which is taking some time and appears to be above budget. 

    The Objective:

    The current reality: 

    Having said that, evening life was vibrant when I went to dinner. Mission Beach is wonderful at this time of the year.

    Feedback on my Mission Beach adventures is welcome.

    Ruth

    !