Record crop for WA grain, CBH says

The country’s largest grain handler has called an end to the harvesting period, with Western Australia delivering a record 22.7 million tonnes of crop into the network.

CBH Group announced the 2022/23 harvest surpassed the previous receival total of 21.3mt, with 100 individual site also breaking records.

Chief operations officer Mick Daw said the season looked promising from as early as April last year with the Grain Industry Association of Western Australia increasing its predictions in the monthly crop reports.

“Yields were expected to be high, and this was quickly confirmed as harvest progressed,” he said.

“Most growers ended up with exceptional yields, although harvest was not without its challenges in some areas with the ongoing wet weather. 

“Deliveries are still trickling in from some growers, particularly in the southern parts of the state, so we expect total receivals for the season to be slightly higher.” 

Mr Daw said 120 sites were opened this year, 10 sites fewer than last year, but resulted in 1.3mt more grain.

“Adding 2.3mt of temporary storage across 39 network sites, and 300,000 tonnes of permanent storage, helped give us the space to take in the extra grain,” he said.

“In the last two years, we’ve added over 5mt of storage to our network.

“The real key to being able to receive another record crop was the effort by the CBH team and our road and rail contractors to outturn as much of the previous year’s crop as possible.

“We delivered 18.1mt of 2021/22 grain to our domestic and international customers before the 2022/23 harvest really kicked off.”

The pace of shipping had not slowed over harvest with 6.7mt exported between October and January, according to Mr Daw.

“This is almost 40 per cent more than we’ve ever achieved in the same period, passing the previous high of 4.9mt in 2017/18.”

“The focus of the CBH team now turns squarely to maximising the amount of grain we can outturn to our customers, with an export target of 2mt per month.”