THE CBH Group has ended the Western Australian grain harvest with its third biggest crop ever, with attention now turning to exporting two million tonnes of grain per month.
A media release from the group issued on 3 February said despite a challenging start to the growing season, more than 20.3 million tonnes of grain were delivered into the CBH network. This included record receivals from the Albany Zone, where 4.6 million tonnes of grain were delivered, exceeding its previous record of 4.5 million tonnes.
Chief operations officer Mick Daw said CBH had three of its highest production years in the last four, driven by what he said were the innovative practices of Western Australian growers.
“The focus for us now turns to maximising the amount of grain we can outturn to our customers,” Mr Daw said.
“We have demonstrated multiple times that we can reach our Horizon 1 target of being able to export 2 million tonnes in a month.
“With the unusual seasonal conditions this season, growers have done an amazing job delivering a crop this size,” Mr Daw said.
“This season was completely different from the record crop of 2022/23, where the season looked promising from as early as April, whereas 2024 started out very dry right across the state.
“It wasn’t until decent rainfall across the grainbelt in early July that the season showed signs of turning around. As crops matured, growing conditions in most areas became ideal with just the right amount of rainfall, and minimal water logging or frost events.
“When harvest approached, decent yields surprised most in the WA grains industry. It is a significant achievement for the industry and one that growers should be immensely proud of.
“Wet weather events and harvest bans made harvest very ‘stop-start’. When conditions were good, growers were able to work quickly to harvest and deliver their grain. Where possible, CBH supported this with extended opening hours, including extra sites opening some Sundays,” Mr Daw said.
“The benefits of recent investment to increase receival capacity across the network allowed us to set new daily network receival records on three separate occasions this year, finishing with our best day of 630,565 tonnes on 29 November.”
This season, 29 sites set daily tonnage records and 20 sites exceeded their previous record for total tonnes delivered to the site in one harvest (see tables below).
Consecutive wet weather events in November and December caused quality issues in some areas.
Falling Numbers testing for wheat was introduced to manage these issues which resulted in an increase in cycle times at some sites. Across the network, the average site cycle time was 43 minutes.
