A recent development in technology to apply a tungsten carbide chip surface to a cast iron roller was trialed at South Johnstone in 1997. The self-roughening characteristics of the maintenance free surface provided good grip for an entire season (1 093 000 tonnes of cane crushed). More comprehensive trials were conducted at Tully Mill in 1998. The performance of the trial rollers at Tully mill suggest that for a typical milling train in the Australian sugar industry of around 1 000 000 tonnes, a mill engineer could expect the tungsten carbide chip surface to provide a maintenance free surface for one season on a top roller, one or two seasons on a delivery roller, and three or four seasons on a feed roller.