Western Australia winter grains harvest nears end

Winter grains harvest including wheat in Western Australia has all but finished with the state's monopoly logistics operator set firmly on exports, Colin Tutt, general manager of operations at Cooperative Bulk Handling Ltd., said Monday (Jan 18).

CBH has received 11.02 million tonnes of winter crops into its nearly 200 upcountry grain storage sites and four export terminals - meeting expectations - and anticipates to receive another 80,000 tonnes through the crop year to March 31, he said.

As for the quality of the newly-harvested grain, Tutt cited an issue with small-size grains, "but grain quality generally was pretty good," he told Dow Jones in a telephone interview.

About one-third of the grain in CBH's system is being warehoused by farmers, and has not been sold or assigned for sale to an operator of a collective sales pool, he said.

There is a rush by the owners of the other two-thirds of receivals to export the grain with 25 vessels expected to be loaded by Saturday (Jan 16) night, Tutt said.

Loading this week has been complicated by an unexpected five extra vessels waiting to take on cargoes. These five vessels failed survey and could not be loaded until cleaned, so loading of them was rolled forward into this week, he said.

Almost 1.4 million metric tonnes of grain is expected to be loaded for export this week by CBH, he said.

In the period from Oct. 1 to Dec. 29, CBH loaded 68 vessels with 1.62 million tonnes of grain, according to the company.