Australia’s supply chain is too expensive: ‘Anything over 300km we should be putting it on rail’

Australia still lacks a standardised rail connection with the cost of shifting goods around the country up to treble that of other economies.

McCain Foods managing director Lyn Radford, AgSecure’s Andrew Henderson and NFF president David Jochinke at the forum on Friday. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Australia’s supply chains are fragile and as much as three times as expensive as comparable systems in other economies connecting producers, distributors and ­retailers, according to the National Farmers’ Federation.

NFF president David Jochinke said their vulnerability was a function of underinvestment as much as climate-related events like cyclones.

“The supply chain is only tested when we have extreme events. And this comes from the environment, this comes from underinvestment, this also comes from when our supply chains internationally also get challenged. So for us, we have to shift our goods in a timely manner, we have to be able to do it efficiently and unfortunately, in Australia, we are very expensive.”

Measured by road and rail, Australia was a costly place to transport goods and as much as three times more expensive than other countries, he said.

“Anything over 300km we should be putting it on rail,” he said.

“Quite frankly, we still don’t have a standardised rail network across the nation.

“We are very expensive.”

McCain Foods boss Lyn Radford said her frozen foods business had struggled to get new supplies into Queensland after Cyclone Alfred, with customers running out of stock, making it more important for the global giant to broaden its base to prepare for regional disruptions.

“When it happens it has a significant impact on the business,” she said. “And we try to separate our production to help us when those weather events do impact. So we have growing regions in Tasmania, we’ve got a couple of growing regions in Victoria, we’ve got growing regions in South Australia, we’ve got growing regions in New Zealand.”

Agsecure founder Andrew Henderson said supply chains were at the heart of food security in Australia and deeply tied up in national security.

“Our national security agencies and our defence forces are preparing for a vastly different future to the one that we assume will play out in this country, and it’s something that we need to reach and come to terms with very quickly to ensure that our food system is, in its entirety, able to meet these types of challenges.

“And that comes from climate-related events, ships getting stuck in the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal drying up, kinetic conflict in the Indo-Pacific region that cuts us off from our major trade routes into the world.

“Australia’s connectedness to the world is absolutely vital to the prosperity of this country, our sovereignty and ultimately our solvency as a nation.”