Bumper grain crop for WA

Both quality and yields “exceeded expectations” across parts of the Western Australia this season, as harvest wraps up.

Bumper year: About 15 million tonnes of grain has been delivered to CBH from WA’s 2020-21 harvest.

GRAIN receivals have poured into West Australian and South Australian sites at record numbers, as harvest wraps up for the season.

About 15 million tonnes of grain has been delivered to CBH from WA’s 2020-21 harvest, making it the company’s fourth largest grain receival on record.

CBH has praised WA’s growers for their “innovative” and “progressive” farming practices coupled with mild temperatures, which produced an above average crop.

“At the start of harvest, the general forecast was for a below average season, so for growers to deliver over and above this is a great achievement,” CBH chief operations officer Ben Macnamara said.

“Harvest was relatively smooth, despite widespread rainfall in November which disrupted the start of harvest and caused some frustration and concern over the potential impact on quality.”

But he said both quality and yields “exceeded expectations” across parts of the state.

“There were some areas where harvest was patchy, and certainly some growers did not have as good a season as others,” Mr Macnamara said.

Receivals at the company also smashed records, with CBH saying it recorded its busiest day in November, when 528,687 tonnes were delivered to 112 sites across the network.

CBH said as well as the network-wide record, 14 sites broke their daily receival records and 15 sites broke their season records.

Meanwhile for South Australia, Viterra received an average of 41,000 tonnes of grain daily from January 11 until January 31. That takes the company’s total receivals to 5.84 million tonnes.

Viterra operations manager Michael Hill said multiple days during the peak of harvest saw about 200,000 tonnes of grain delivered, with nine of Viterra’s sites breaking records this harvest including seven daily receival and four total season receival records.

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