Australia Weather News

There has been a lot to celebrate this year in the macadamia industry - a record crop, good quality kernel, growing overseas demand and high prices.

But for some macadamia growers in northern New South Wales 2016 is not looking too bright after Sunday's storm.

The weather event brought strong winds and hail decimating next year's young macadamia crop.

The Australian Macadamia Society's chief executive officer Jolyon Burnett said damage was very localised.

"We're hearing very severe damage out around Dunoon, Rosebank, Numulgi, these sorts of areas," Mr Burnett said.

"Fortunately it seems around Alstonville and the plateau the damage has been pretty insignificant.

"It's difficult to put an all of industry estimate on it at this stage but there's no doubt some growers have been very badly hit."

So bad in fact that some growers could lose up to 80 per cent of their 2016 crop.

Mr Burnett said the nut is only half way through maturity with harvest due to start in March.

"It is prone to being knocked off the tree particularly by hail and very strong winds," he said.

"Certainly the storm on Sunday where it hit was one of the most ferocious we've seen for a long time.

"Almost regardless of how wide-spread the damage is with world-wide demand the strongest it's ever been and that being reflected in very firm prices, any loss of crop is just tragic at this point in time."

The storm has also caused major damage to orchard floors across the region.

"As always when there's really intense rain over short periods combined with strong winds what we find is the orchard floor and the infrastructure around the orchard can be damaged," he said.

Mr Burnett said that damage there alone could take more than one season to recover.

"We will be working with growers over the coming week to try and put a better estimate on what sort of financial loss has been incurred and how much of an impact that might make on the crop for 2016," he said.

"But certainly anything that's been lost through this storm can't be regained for the 2016 crop."