Western Australia looks to shipping grain in containers

THE South East Premium Wheat Growers Association (SEPWA) is seeking funding from Royalties for Regions to investigate the feasibility of establishing a trade to export Esperance-grown grain using shipping containers, reports Farm Weekly of Victoria Park, Western Australia.

This comes in the wake of the deregulation of the grain market for local growers.

"Going into a deregulated market there are opportunities unfolding in the marketing side, it's a new, exciting area," said SEPWA project officer Nigel Metz. "We also have a container crane locally that has excess capacity."

Mr Metz said that the initiative would need to attract around 15 per cent of the region's grain volumes to maintain the provision of a regular container service, pointing out that grain grown in Esperance in Western Australia has traditionally been marketed as bulk commodities to bulk markets.

On the other hand, he said containers would attract higher premiums above traditional bulk cargo.

According to Mr Metz, a 15-month research project would need to be conducted to determine whether the project is feasible, with issues such as accessing containers, continuity of trade and identifying new markets needing to be addressed, the report said.

"Other ports have a lot of product coming in containers," he said. "We don't have that so we are going to have to relocate containers here, that's going to be a significant cost.

(Source:www.schednet.com)