POOR rail infrastructure, deregulation of Australian wheat exports and a shift away from pools to cash prices is putting West Australian ports under pressure.
CBH Group operations general manager Colin Tutt said these were some of the reasons behind the acrimony that has broken out between wheat exporters and the West Australian bulk handler in the two harvests since the wheat single desk was abolished.
Speaking at the Australian Grains Industry Conference in Melbourne last week, Mr Tutt said loading of ships "just wasn't good enough" and he gave commitments to improve CBH's service in coming harvests.
Grain traders attending the conference took aim at CBH for the high costs and handling of ship loading but others said similar problems existed with other bulk handlers.
Mr Tutt said when grain prices were high two years ago, growers sold mostly for cash.
He said this meant exporters wanted to ship their grain as quickly as possible through the ports as they were carrying the financial risk.
Coupled with a large number of new exporters since the abolition of the single desk and drought in eastern Australia, West Australian port terminals were placed under extreme pressure.
Mr Tutt said in a year when 14 million tonnes of grain was shipped, demand from grain traders for ship loading exceeded 2.5 million tonnes last February alone. On top of that, transporting the crop to port by rail did not work well.
"We couldn't get rail to perform for various reasons," he said.
"Normally, 70 per cent of the crop goes by rail. We couldn't get it past 55 per cent.
"We need to get the Government to put more money into (rail) track maintenance so that we don't have to run trains at 20km/h."
Mr Tutt said exporters believe bulk handlers give preferential treatment to their own grain marketing arms when it came to loading ships.
"But CBH Grain causes me the most grief of any one of my customers," he said.
Mr Tutt said changes in exporting grain would be made urgently. "It needs to be fair to all users," he said.
Australian Grain Exporters Association president Robert Green said the ship loading task worked much smoother in the eastern states.
But Emerald Grain Australia chairman Alan Winney said his group had little problem in Western Australia but more issues in eastern Australia.
