WEST PERTH, AUSTRALIA — The CBH Group completed its 2020-21 harvest season with 15.1 million tonnes of grain delivered into the network, the fourth largest season on record.
Ben Macnamara, chief operations officer of CBH, congratulated growers and the CBH team for an outstanding season.
“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,” Macnamara said. “Harvest was relatively smooth, despite widespread rainfall in November that disrupted the start of harvest and caused some frustration and concern over the potential impact on quality.
“In the end, both quality and yields exceeded expectations across some 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. All in all, I’d like to congratulate growers on a great season and thank them for working with us to bring in the large crop safely.”
Several records were broken this season, including CBH’s busiest day ever experienced on Nov. 23, 2020, when 528,687 tonnes were delivered to 112 sites across the network.
The network-wide record joined 14 sites that broke their daily receival records and 15 sites that broke their season records.
“These records were made possible by our significant investment into expanding and enhancing our network sites, the CBH team operating sites efficiently and grower’s investing in their equipment to increase their harvest capacity,” Macnamara said. “As the pace and size of harvest increases, we will continue investing in our network to ensure we can provide an efficient service to growers when they need it most.”
CBH attributed improved site efficiencies due to the continued uptake of the CDF app with 96% of tonnes delivered via the app this harvest, up from 91% in 2019-20 and 69% in 2018-19, the first year of network-wide use.
CBH is now focused on the task of outturning the grain to its four ports. The shipping stem is fully booked until the end of June.
