WA grain growers reach harvest halfway mark with 9Mt in CBH Group bins this week

WA grain growers are approaching the halfway mark in their hefty harvest programs with nearly half of the State’s pegged 20 million tonne harvest in the bin so far. CBH Group’s latest crop report — released on Monday —revealed there was 9.16Mt of grain in the handler’s receival sites by the end of the day on Sunday with the 10Mt target approaching. The grain handler had its biggest day on record on Friday with 533,000 tonnes of grain delivered to CBH’s extensive network of upcountry receival sites. For the first time, CBH experienced three consecutive days where more than 500,000 tonnes of grain was delivered across WA each day. The Geraldton Port Zone was leading the charge with 2.40Mt in the bin, followed by the Kwinana North Zone at 2.30Mt. Harvest in the Esperance Port Zone was yet to crack 2.Mt at 1.70Mt, while the Kwinana South Zone was sitting at 1.60Mt and Albany Port Zone at 1.16Mt. More than 2.8Mt of grain was delivered last week, with 12 CBH sites smashing delivery records across the State. CBH chief operations officer Mick Daw said it had been an extremely busy period across all zones as growers’ crop yields exceeded expectations. “With growers experiencing excellent harvesting conditions combined with higher than expected yields, we are seeing many sites continuing to break daily receival records,” he said. “As mentioned previously, given the significant size of this year’s crop, more sites and services will fill and close earlier this year if we can’t keep them open with essential harvest outloading or extra storage.” Mr Daw said CBH bins along standard gauge line rail lines were experiencing “pressure”, meaning some sites and services would “fill and close earlier this year” if additional harvest outloading or building additional storage was not possible. He acknowledged this would be frustrating for some growers, but said CBH was “able to respond to the task”. “In addition to the 1.5Mt of emergency storage we have built, with 2Mt planned, we have also opened some non-network sites to cater for larger volumes,” he said. CBH plans on keeping growers up-to-date with bin closures and availability of services through its CDF app.