CROPPING

Records tumble in WA harvest

Powering through WA's harvest

Alex Paull

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CBH reported total receivals topping 9.5 million tonnes on Friday.

Growers in Geraldton and Esperance are expected to start winding down over the next week, while Albany will likely be continuing harvest into the Christmas period.

“Having sites break their daily receival records is uncommon for this point in harvest as it generally happens once growers have moved on to harvesting wheat,” Capper said.

“While Geraldton and Esperance are looking toward winding up in certain areas over the next fortnight we should see growers in the Kwinana zone start to move on to wheat shortly.

“Strong course grain yields in combination with many Malt 2, Oat 2, Feed 3 segregations has chewed up a lot of space.

"Our shipping program is strong but the crop is coming in very fast and any delays to vessels could see services disrupted from day to day - especially as we transition from coarse grains to wheat.”

The Geraldton zone has again had a very busy week with nearly 500,000 tonnes delivered, taking total receivals for the zone to 2.5Mt.

“We’re starting to see growers finish in some areas. The fine weather has played a big part in the zone with receivals continuing to flow well,” Geraldton zone manager Duncan Gray said

The Kwinana zone ticked over 4 million tonnes of receivals on Thursday, with over 200,000 tonnes received every day over the past week 

Zone Manager Gavin Bignell said the entire zone was now in the full swing of harvest, with some areas coming close to having their canola and barley finished and moving onto wheat.

The slow start to harvest in the Albany zone has been demonstrated by almost half a million tonnes less being delivered compared to the same time last year.

There are early indications of frost damage, which is being accommodated by the introduction of additional off-grade segregations.

The Esperance zone was helped along by fine weather once again this week which pushed receivals to above 627,000 tonnes over the last seven days – taking the total to 1.Mt across the zone.

Many growers have either finished or are close to finishing, with yields and quality both going extremely well, while most growers now well into their wheat programs.

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