PERTH, AUSTRALIA — Powered by a bumper harvest in Western Australia, CBH Group exported 2.18 million tonnes of grain and moved 1 million tonnes by rail in a single month for the first time in its 90-year history, the cooperative reported Jan. 3.
“A huge congratulations to our hardworking frontline CBH employees across state, our dedicated transporters and contractors, our regional communities that support us and the grain growers of Western Australia for producing the bumper harvest,” CBH said in a LinkedIn post.
In its Dec. 19 harvest report, CBH noted it had received more than 16.7 million tonnes of grain from farmers — including wheat, barley and canola — as of Dec. 18, despite inclement cold and wet weather in central and southern parts of the state and hot conditions with high winds in central and northern areas during the previous week. By Dec. 26, the company reported having received 20 million tonnes in its network during this harvest, matching the previous year’s performance.
“It is really pleasing to see records broken on all fronts from site and zone receival records to road, rail and shipping,” Mick Daw, chief operations officer at CBH, said in the Dec. 19 report. “In particular, I’d like to call out the improved rail performance which has seen our rail provider, Aurizon, continue to break monthly records consecutively from July to November.
“The largest rail tonnage record of 8.5 million tonnes for the calendar year period from January to December was originally set in 2019, however, that has already been broken with the current rail record sitting at 8.8 million tonnes, with the rest of December still yet to come.”
