FORCE majeure events as well as constraints around labour as a result of COVID-19 have highlighted the need for investment in the CBH Group network's supply chain efficiencies.
CBH Group chief operations officer Ben Macnamara said with a big harvest expected this year the co-operative needed to put a lot of planning in to meet the various challenges it faced each year and put the "sprint and agility" back into the network.
Disruptions to the network this year included the Wooroloo bushfires which Mr Macnamara said shut down their Kwinana supply chain for about two weeks.
"If you think about what goes into Kwinana on a weekly basis - we are trying to get about 140,000 to 150,000 tonnes, so a two week closure means we are about 300,000t down on our accumulation," Mr Macnamara said.
Other supply chain challenges faced by the co-operative so far this year included the Northam floods in February which, despite delivering some great summer rainfall for WA growers, washed out some of the CBH network's tracks and forced its rail operator, Arc Infrastructure, to call force majeure.
"There was also a derailment in the Avon Valley at around about the same time as well and then we also had cyclone Seroja which impacted the Geraldton supply chain mostly but also partially in Kwinana north with a lot of power outages throughout that part of the State," Mr Macnamara said.
Mr Macnamara said the magnitude of these weather events meant about 400,000t of grain had been affected.
He said these events coupled with a shortage of train and truck drivers for the agricultural sector and a stronger demand for the State's grain in the front half of the year had all played a role in the co-operative not being able to meet market demand.
"Watco has been proactive in training drivers since its duration in WA, but because of COVID the flow of people in and out of WA has been restricted and that means the resources sector has looked within the State for their resources," Mr Macnamara said.
"That, combined with a very buoyant resources sector with particularly strong prices for iron ore, has resulted in the demand for drivers increasing and that's placed pressure on the likes of Watco and other rail operators as well."
Despite acknowledging that the skills shortage had also presented some challenges from a supply chain perspective in getting equipment into the State, Mr Macnamara said at this point in time, CBH Group did not see any risk for this harvest.
As a result of needing to get more grain out in the front half of the year, Mr Macnamara said it was not uncommon for the co-operative to lease additional fleets and that the group was looking at investing in more rolling stock.
"Certainly we would be looking at least one fleet and potentially three with a couple of loco's per fleet and up to 60 wagons per fleet and then we'd phase that out over a number of years," Mr Macnamara said.
"We are working our way through whether we would buy those new at the current point in time.
"Obviously we are working through a renegotiation of our rail agreement with Watco, so those pieces are a little interconnected."
If the CBH Group does invest, it will be the first substantial acquisition of rolling stock since the co-operative commissioned its existing fleet in 2012.
In addition to this, CBH's four rapid rail outloading projects at Moora, Brookton, Cranbrook and Broomehill, which have received funding as part of the State government's Revitalising Agricultural Region Freight Strategy are expected to help increase the groups tonnes of grain to port each month within the next few years.
"We are looking to break ground at Moora by the end of this year and we think that build process will be in excess of 12 months," Mr Macnamara said.
The infrastructure projects form part of the CBH Group's plans to increase the network's existing capacity of 1.6 million tonnes of grain to port per month to 2.2mt.
With WA's average receivals into the CBH storage and handling system increasing by about three per cent per year since 1990, projecting out and using a five year rolling average, CBH Group estimates that by 2030 the co-operative will have an average task of hauling about 18mt of grain each year.
"Obviously that will fluctuate depending on seasons, but it does demonstrate why we need to continue to invest in our outloading capacity," Mr Macnamara said.
"In agriculture we definitely will have bushfires, flooding and those types of events that will impact us in the future and these projects that were working on with government are designed to be able to provide us with sprint capacity to be able to catch back up."