WA Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan praises CBH rebate pause and grains supply chain reinvestment plan

WA Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan has praised CBH for its decision to withhold rebates from its grower members and instead reinvest surplus back into the network. Speaking at the Grain Industry Association of WA’s Annual Forum at The Westin on Wednesday night, Ms MacTiernan said she believed the decision announced earlier this week was a good one. “I’m pleased to read you are going to retain that profit… to give that long term investment into freight infrastructure,” she said. The cooperative juggernaut sent an email to grower members on Monday, informing them it was expected to hand down a record surplus in its marketing and trading division after last year’s record 24.3Mt harvest coincided with high grain prices. The cooperative’s chair Simon Stead revealed CBH would not offer a rebate to farmers but instead reinvest the forecast returns from marketing and trading into its network to improve WA’s grains supply chain. It also plans to retain some marketing and trading surplus to provide equity to buy WA’s growing crop, which is forecast to be more than 20 million tonnes this year for the second time in a row and also in history. It is the third year CBH has withheld rebate payments to its 3700 grower members after suspending the cash payments in 2020 for the first time in nine years, opting to instead retain surplus cash to bulwark its business. The decision to do so again reflects a rocky past year which included a $17 million demurrage bill in 2020-21 after it was unable to get grain to port quickly due to interruptions with the supply chain. CBH is also expected to this week slug growers with increased freight rates at harvest, which kicked off with the first delivery last week.