Clearing for farm land starts.

Bulldozers have started clearing the first block of what eventually will be 13,400ha of new farming land near Kununurra.

Chief executive of Chinese-backed company Kimberley Agricultural Investment, Jian Zhong Yin said the beginning of land clearing was a major milestone for the company.

“This is actually the foundation for the whole of our development work here,” he said.

The company plans to invest about $700 million in the East Kimberley farming region over the next five years.

KAI general manager Jim Engelke said the company was looking to initially grow sorghum for ethanol production, with a long-term view to growing sugar if economies of scale could be reached to make a Kununurra processing mill profitable.

“We need scale in a sugar industry to make it viable, so we’re talking some years before a mill,” he said.

“The smallest mill we want to build is a two million tonne mill, so in rough area that’s about 20,000ha.”

Mr Engelke said the company would look to the 14,000ha of existing Ord farmland and at future developments in the Northern Territory to expand potential sugar-growing land.

The first 500ha is expected to be planted next year, with sorghum, maize or chia the most likely choices.

The State Government has spent $311 million to double the size of the Ord River Scheme to 28,000ha, extending the main irrigation channel 31km and building 40km of sealed roads.