Agribusiness & Food

GrainCorp’s Qld-NSW figures down 73pc

Grain. Photo: Ingram Publishing

Drought conditions in eastern Australia have cut GrainCorp’s receival figures in Queensland and New South Wales by roughly 73 per cent year-on-year.

GrainCorp said this week the harvest was “effectively complete” in both states.

The company says drought conditions have led to a significant share of production remaining on farm, or delivered directly to domestic consumers.

With the 2018/19 harvest effectively complete, Queensland growers have  fed 107,100 tonnes of grain into GrainCorp’s receival network, down more than 80 per cent from the 557,250 tonnes recorded in 2017/18.

In New South Wales, receivals have dropped 71 per cent, from 2.08 million tonnes to just 605,600 tonnes.

The harvest continues in Victoria, with 1.28 million tonnes so far received. 2.94 million tonnes was received in 2017/18.

GrainCorp warned in October that drought conditions experienced in recent months would have a significant impact on volumes. Agribusiness bank Rabobank also warned of the scale of the drought’s impact on grain volumes in its Winter Crop Production Outlook.

The outlook forecast a national harvest of just 29.3 million tonnes in the 2018/19 winter crop season down 23 per cent. “For vast regions of the eastern states, there will be no harvest, and where there is a harvest, yields will be anywhere between 30 percent and 50 percent down on average,” the report said.

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