Broadacre farmer Charles Brett is one of four northern New South Wales grain growers who have put their time, money and energy where their mouth is, forming cooperative GrowerCo.
Charles and his wife Fiona farm 3700 hectares at their farm Kirribilli 75 km west of Moree and another 3300 hectares on their Queensland property Minnel North, north of Toobeah in Queensland.
Both properties are 100 percent cropping; rotating chickpeas, cotton, wheat and sorghum when the season allows.
Very much the logistics man, Charles is able to run the two properties located two hours apart by contracting out all cropping operations.
Always looking for the best way to manage and optimise their farming assets when cropping margins began to shrink Charles and Fiona sought out greater returns on their grain growing investments by selling wheat directly into Asia via container trade.
It was that same drive to optimise their returns that brought about the idea of a cooperative a within a local bench-marking group of which Charles is a member along with with fellow growers Lisa Orchin, Stuart Tighe and Tim Grellman.
“We are members of a bench-marking group and have been for many years, our interest is really in making our core business profitable, how do we make it better,” Mr Brett said.
After investigating ways to pool grain, the group moved to investigating more efficient ways to reduce freight costs from farm to port, with freight currently equating to one third of their running costs.
“You could look at your chemicals from your reseller, you could bash them down 20 cents a litre for round up and you couldn’t go on a holiday with the difference. But the freight is such a huge component of the cost, that's where you could make a saving.”
Why is freight in Australia so inefficient?
“Our infrastructure was built a long time ago and it has never really been upgraded, what is happening now is that the old system we have is costly, the cost of those inefficiencies are passed back down to the grower. So the grower pays,” Mr Brett said.
That in essence is the aim of the cooperative. To benefit the grower.
The four directors stand to see no more financial gain than that they will see as a grower profiting from the increased efficiency in transporting their grain.
They actually begin at a deficit given they have foot the bill for the initial time, planning, and lobbying.
The cooperative plans to utilise the preexisting rail infrastructure more efficiently.
“ You don't have to reinvent the wheel, you don't need entirely new infrastructure, a large part of the cost is caused because the supply chain is very fragmented, with so many on farm sites ,” Mr Brett said.
While information and research is currently being collated by the cooperative on the best way to do that, it is likely that that will happen through centralising and coordinating one grain recieval site, where all grain can be transferred to a train and straight to port.
With an efficient rail transport system that runs on a loop from grain receival site to port and back again.
A large grower base, combined with the cooperative building strong relationships with grain receival sites, trucking companies and train operators would make this possible.
“It all has to get pumped into a train and taken to the port, what we are all proposing is why not do it all together,” Mr Brett said.
It currently is cheaper for Mr Brett along with many other New South Wales growers to truck his grain north to the Port of Brisbane, then south to the much closer Port of Newcastle.
“Having grower control will bring savings back to the farm gate,” Mr Brett said.
What was once a discussion between four growers around a table is now a reality, with GrowerCo focusing on building the large grower membership base that they will need to influence the changes needed to increase supply chain efficiency to the Port of Newcastle.
