EXPANSION and enhancement within the CBH system is part of its new network strategy Plan, Build and Operate.
CBH project delivery general manager Andrew Porter said he was focused on the build phase of the strategy with continuous investment into the network.
“We want to upgrade and expand our network,” Mr Porter said.
“To do this I have spent the past few years building up a very engineering orientated and high performing team.”
Mr Porter said they only had one chance at deploying capital so they had to get it right.
“This year has been a great year to show how successful our Plan, Build, Operate has been,” he said.
“We have managed to deploy more than $130 million worth of capital into our network.”
This was spent on increasing storage in the network, renewing existing assets and improving grower services.
Up until September 2018, CBH had built 650,000 tonnes of permanent storage largely in the Kwinana zone.
But Mr Porter said the momentum was still there and they were on track to complete a further 300,000t of storage, new to the network, by the end of this calendar year.
With estimates unusually large this year in the Kwinana zone, the build team has also been working on catering for grain overflow.
Mr Porter said an additional 900,000t of emergency storage was in place for this harvest.
“Here we are taking our already invested capital and further investing to get a better service,” he said.
“The real money goes into the design and the foundation for the storage, including the pavement and below that.
“So this year we have completed 122,000 square metres of road repairs throughout the network, with surface repair both in our bulk heads and on our roadway inside sites.”
Mr Porter said a key factor in the build process was safety.
“Everything we build and everything we built has had a safety focus,” he said.
Mr Porter said CBH was building long-term investments and assets so it had to ensure the team on the ground could operate as safely as possible.
“We have strengthened our engineering muscle and we have strengthened our project execution muscle,” he said.