In order to improve the sugarcane quality for the whole stalk of 4ZZX–48 type sugarcane harvester, a spiral sugarcane lifter was designed and installed. It was composed of a picking up unit and a conveying unit. When the spiral drum rotated, the spiral blade rotated to form a spiral line, driving the lodging sugarcane along the spiral line to upward movement. The mechanical simulation results showed that the maximum restraint moment was from the root of sugar cane and the axial thrust of screw blade was increased and reached the maximum at 0.8 s during the picking period of sugarcane. The performance test results indicated that when the sugarcane lifter picked up speed is 90 r/min, the installation angle is 5 degrees, the performance is best for cane dividing with the shortest time of lifting up. Duringthe conveying unit, spiral blade axial thrust into the lifting force to decrease the restriction moment of sugarcane without mutation and lift up smoothly. If conveying speed is too slow, spiral blade could hinder sugarcane rising. When the conveying speed is 120 r/min, the best performance of lifting was obtained for sugarcane.