A TOTAL of 286,000 tonnes of permanent storage has been added to CBH Group receival sites at Moora, Konongorring and Watheroo.
The three sites were officially reopened last week, with growers in the area given the opportunity to tour the upgraded facilities.
132,000 tonnes of permanent storage was added at Moora, 84,000t at Konongorring and 70,000t at Watheroo, with each being serviced by a pit and conveyor style running gear that runs at 500t per hour.
CBH chief operations officer Ben Macnamara said crops in the area, being areas four and five, has grown quite significantly over the past 10 or so years.
"That is a result of increased hectares being planted and also crop composition with a bit more barley going in, so we needed to keep pace with the increase and these builds are a part of that," Mr Macnamara said.
"If you go back to the 2018 harvest, where we received a record in the Kwinana zone of eight million tonnes, we put emergency storage in place at each of these sites and these builds are essentially converting that temporary storage into permanent storage."
On top of the additional storage, which has been done in the form of open bulkheads, an additional weighbridge was added at Moora and a bypass road added at Konongorring.
"Moora is a pretty large site which has a total storage of 322,000t and received in excess of that, so we were able to justify the second weighbridge to help with cycle times," Mr Macnamara said.
"There is a bit of a bottleneck at the existing weighbridge and the new one should elevate that issue for growers going forward, so we will get them in and out of the site quicker and they will be able to get back to their paddocks sooner.
"The bypass road means that growers can get around the Konongorring site in a more efficient manner and it elevates one of the bottlenecks there."
The sites were three of six originally slated for upgrades this year, with COVID-19 causing the work at Brookton, Dale and Hyden to be delayed until 2021.
Work at Moora, Konongorring and Watheroo had already started when coronavirus hit, whereas the other three projects hadn't started yet and at that point in time CBH was concerned about what has happened in Victoria with the second wave.
The co-op didn't want to get itself into a position where it was part way through a build and then couldn't service growers at harvest.
"We plan five years ahead and have a network strategy in place which seeks to rationalise the number of sites down to 100 which will take us another three years of work," Mr Macnamara said.
"This year we've taken the opportunity to do a lot of sustaining capital work and that means respecting the infrastructure that we've got.
"We've completed a number of smaller projects such as Merredin where we upgraded the bulkheads, we've also done a lot of work at the Albany and Geraldton terminals and on the electrics throughout the Esperance zone."
The sites at Moora, Konongorring and Watheroo have all been wet commissioned and are ready to receive growers grain with the first delivery come harvest.
