WITH the world hungry for more grain, and Australian crop productivity on the rise again, better access to port facilities is becoming a serious target for Cargill's newly-beefed up export marketing activities.
Cargill was recently squeezed out of a chance to bid for a half stake in the grain loading facilities at the Port of Melbourne by Japanese commodity trading rival (and part owner of the site) Sumitomo.
Sumitomo gained full control of the terminal after acquiring AWB's former 50 per cent stake in the Australian Bulk Alliance (ABA) infrastructure from Agrium.
Sumitomo passed on its port and rail freight acquisitions to its Australian grain interest, Emerald Group, early this month in a deal set to significantly boost Emerald's ability to respond to export market opportunities.
Cargill has been also itching to get better grain export terminal access in NSW and until May its newly-acquired AWB business was part of a Newcastle export terminal joint venture Newcastle Agri Terminal with Glencore, Queensland Cotton and CBH, which started exploring options at the former BHP steelworks site at Mayfield two years ago.
However, with the prospect of overall grain movements being freed up by a new terminal in NSW, Cargill's commercial general manager Mitch Morison admitted the company was now considering options in other States.
Western Australia - the single biggest producer of our export wheat crop - is likely to feature strongly on Cargill's radar, particularly as it is also increasingly productive in canola (as are other States).
Canola's market export options are increasingly exciting for Cargill, which has almost doubled the number of GrainFlow sites in eastern Australia now buying canola to 13 this year.
But in order to get premium export prices for the crop it needs to get canola into Europe in December - which is not easy when access to port facilities is hotly contested by other competitors and grain freight routes are also clogged and run down.
"WA and South Australia are historically big export States and WA has the most efficient and lowest cost export network," Mr Morison said.
"Trains in WA move 4000 tonnes at a time, compared to 2500 in NSW.
"The biggest problem is that right around Australia there are not many natural ports available for development - most have been taken long ago.
"Our challenge is to anticipate where our export opportunities are likely to be and where the productivity growth for different grains is likely to happen."
Mr Morison said South Australia, a key market for quality wheat exports, already had seven existing port sites controlled by Viterra and close to graingrowing areas (although several were restricted by shallow harbours).
However, proposals were now being floated for a new joint grain and ore loading facility on the Eyre Peninsula by an independent developer.
Meanwhile, Cargill has recently bolstered its rail freight capacity by taking its train sets from six to eight in NSW, where stockpiles after this harvest are likely to keep AWB's country storage sites busy outloading grain to export and domestic buyers for the next 18 months.
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