AUSTRALIA is in the midst of one of its busiest grain exporting periods on record, with 3.5 million tonnes of capacity booked on the shipping stem for February alone.
Western Australia leads the charge, with over 1.8mt of exports scheduled for this month after CBH alone processed 1.88mt in January.
While the sheer volumes will stretch port and upcountry transport logistics close to breaking point, early indications are the out-turn program is progressing relatively smoothly.
“Things are moving pretty well, it is busy wherever you look,” said David Johnson, chief executive of Emerald Grain.
He said the keys to ensuring the maximum tonnage of grain was moved were road and rail logistics.
“Exactly how much grain we can get onto the water will come down to how efficiently upcountry road and rail networks operate,” he said.
Mr Johnson said it was understandable this year’s big harvest was stretching supply chain infrastructure.
“If there was enough capacity to do this record season easily then in other years we’d have massive under-utilisation of the network in other years with more normal production.”
Jock Carter, executive director of the Newcastle Agri Terminal (NAT) said his facility was fully booked until the end of October.
He said the business was hopeful of moving 900,000 tonnes for the year from November, which would be a record.
In South Australia it is a similar story, with Viterra general manager of operations Tim Krause saying shipping capacity is fully booked for the next few months.
He said Viterra reported a record January, with 814,000t shipped out last month, with 360,000t of this coming out of the company’s two Adelaide ports, also a record.
Mr Johnson said in the south the export program was still primarily barley.
“At ports such as Geelong, the focus is still very much on moving barley.”
Further north, Mr Carter said NAT was primarily executing wheat orders.
“There were some chickpeas going out earlier on, but now it is mainly wheat.”
Farm lobby groups are piling the pressure on government to improve logistics to cut costs in moving grain to port.
Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) grains group president Brett Hosking said the poor state of rail track and constant speed limits for trains were a continuing problem.
“In a season like this where there’s a massive export program rail is the weak link,” Mr Hosking said.
Mr Carter said it was a similar story in northern NSW.
“Our constraint is not the terminal capacity, it is getting the grain there.”
All the port operators reported a pleasing spread of exporters.
Mr Krause said in South Australia there had been 11 different exporters booking shipping capacity for exports to Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
Mr Carter said there were four key exporters out of NAT, with another five or six businesses also utilising the facility to a lesser extent.
Pleasingly for the NAT, Mr Carter said of the key exporters only one was part of the consortium of grain businesses that owns the young company.