ESPERANCE Ports Sea and Land (EPSL) recently attracted a delegation from Queensland Sugar Limited (QSL) who were interested in seeing first hand the diversified mineral and food product exporting activities that are successfully undertaken in Esperance.
“This is just a fact-finding mission,” QSL spokesman, David Williams said at EPSL last Tuesday.
“We felt that the size, management practices and diversified nature of Esperance would provide us with relevant insight.”
Mr Williams said QSL stores, handles and ships sugar but is looking at the feasibility of diversifying into shipping other products to optimise their equipment and machinery.
“We are based in Brisbane and operate six bulk sugar terminals from Bundaberg to Cairns,” Mr Williams said.
“We didn’t see any benefit in going to Port Hedland, or any of the bigger processing plants because anything we do will be similar to the operations in Esperance.”
“We wanted to see what you did here, how you did it and learn from the experiences to enable us to more fully understand the benefits and issues associated with diversification and growth.”
EPSL chief executive officer, Michal Frydrych told the delegation that Esperance is a rather unique facility because it handles both iron ore and wheat and has a reputation for being one of the cleanest ports in Australia, if not the world, handling the same type of products.
“You won’t see any dust here,” he said.
“We have a lot of restrictions on our operations, which has determined the way we do things.
“Because we can’t load certain materials when the wind is blowing across the town, ships have to be kept waiting and this requires us to be more efficient.
“The upside of that is that the port is very clean.
“Whales come in here, as well as dolphins and people even swim nearby.”
Mr Frydrych said there were very strict guidelines in place because of the combination of materials handled at Esperance.
“Iron ore and nickel can’t be mixed and even some iron ores can’t be mixed, so we follow very strict measures here to ensure that there is no crossover between products.
“We are very good at what we do.”
