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CBH prepares emergency storage plans on bumper harvest

Headshot of Jenne Brammer
Jenne BrammerThe West Australian
Harvest at Northampton.
Camera IconHarvest at Northampton. Credit: Jayde Teakle

WA farmers are having such a ripper growing season that CBH is preparing one million tonnes of emergency grain storage for harvest, and plans to open at least a third more receival bins than usual.

The announcement by CBH coincides with the Grain Industry Association revealing the State was on track for record tonnage, conservatively estimating 19.63m tonnes.

GIWA crop report author Michael Lamond said the harvest estimate was conservative because crops still had to make it through the inevitable frost that can shave off significant tonnage in the spring.

“The recent rainfall has consolidated the excellent start to the grain growing season in WA. All regions of the state have received top-up rain recently and this has continued to drive tonnage estimates up,” Mr Lamond said.

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“Whilst there still is risk of grain tonnages falling away, with the very large total area sown this year (a record almost 9m hectares), coupled with the good growing conditions across the State, it is hard to see how we will not be in for a record total tonnage.... by a substantial margin.”

CBH Group acting chief executive Ben Macnamara said given the excellent start to the season, and with more rainfall is expected in coming days, CBH was planning one million tonnes of emergency storage across 14 sites, spread throughout the different port zones.

Emergency storage comprises pre-prepared ground, wingwalls, additional drive over grids, tarpaulins and mobile weighbridges and sampling sheds.

Every year CBH opens about 100 network strategy sites but also has a similar number around regional WA that remain closed for smaller or average sized crops.

“We use 100 of our network strategy sites. On top of that, from time to time, we open peak planning sites. This year, we expect to open, in excess 30 of those,” Mr Macnamara said.

Those extra sites could amount to an additional 400,000-500,000 tonnes of extra storage capacity (on top of emergency storage), he said.

The rains have not been good for all farmers. Very wet areas in the south-west and south coast of WA are now becoming very very wet and waterlogged, which had big negative impacts for some farmers.

GIWA’s Mr Lamond said the Albany port zone was very wet and significant crop loss from waterlogging was expected.

At current grain prices, a crop of around 20m tonnes is worth $7bn to the local economy.

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