THAT’S A SHIP LOAD: CBH outturns 20Mt of grain from its supply chain for the first time in 90-year history

CBH Group has achieved one of its biggest milestones in the co-operative’s 90-year history — outturning more than 20 million tonnes during a financial year on the back of the State’s biggest grain harvest. The farmer-owned co-operative announced on August 24 it had achieved the historic achievement — smashing the 2021-22 record of 18.10Mt outturned to international customers from its four ports at Geraldton, Kwinana, Albany and Esperance. It still has one month to go until its end of financial and shipping year on September 30, meaning the total is likely to be much higher. CBH Group’s online shipping stem shows hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grain is still set to be exported between the end of August and end of September from its four ports — with the biggest a 60,000t shipment of barley from Kwinana. In a post to its social media that same day, CBH paid testament to the “hard work of the CBH team, transporters and contractors who helped make this happen, safely”. The milestone was comes CBH Group celebrates 90 harvests this year, and after WA’s biggest harvest on record ended in February. A whopping 26 million tonnes was harvested in WA between September 2022 and February 2023, smashing CBH Group’s receival, shipping and rail records and pumping $10 billion into the State’s economy. The 2022-23 harvest record broke that set just one year before, when 24.3Mt was harvested across WA. CBH — which is WA’s main grain handler and marketer — received 22.7Mt of the 2022-23 crop, up on the 22.1Mt it took in in 2021-22 across its sprawling network of upcountry receival sites. The rest of the harvest — about 3.36Mt — was expected to have been delivered outside the CBH system to competitors including Bunge, retained on farm, or sold through private contracts. It’s a bit of a different story for WA this year, where farmers are expected to produce 60 per cent less grain than last year’s record to reach 16.96 million tonnes — more in line with the State’s average. The Grains Industry Association of WA’s most recent crop production forecast slashed 2Mt from the July prediction of 18.13Mt, when conditions looked more promising between Geraldton and Esperance. Flooded paddocks spotted in parts of the Great Southern are a stark contrast to the dry conditions across most of WA’s grain-growing areas, with yield potential likely to fall further without significant rainfall in the next month. CBH this month put the call out to its grower members to submit their grower estimates via its LoadNet portal as it looks to prepare for the upcoming 2023-24 harvest, which normally kicks off about mid-September before ramping up in November. The co-operative regards grower estimates as crucial so it knows what farmers have planted and where they plant to deliver, to ensure it can “get it right” at harvest time. “Last year, deliveries at some sites were up to three times more than what was submitted through estimates,” CBH posted on its Facebook page. “This resulted in storage shortfalls and impacted services to growers at those sites.”