Storage in Aust

[malleefarmer]

City, here in South Australia weve just had a 9.8 million tonne harvest, wheat feed barley malt barley canola peas lentils chickpeas oats lupins probably in that order for tonnes as well.
Would suggest without knowing exactly but will endevour to findout 85% of that is stored in a centralized system,my local elevator is 32kms away and holds this year 320,000 tonnes of wheat and barley and canola in mostly bunkers and some in upright storage and some in sheds.
I deliver grain gets graded and allocated accordingly, i then either sell for cash, leave in storage unsold or deliver to a previous contract or pool sell the grain. Probably 20 buyers have grain at my local site all intermingled.
the site had to build extra bunkers during havest to accomodate huge crop.
Our biggest problem is if grain is carried over to next year it clogs the site for 2011 harvest, but that the owner of the grains perogative be it a farmer or a trader. A monthly storage fee is paid.

[poorboy]

Malleefarmer what is the monthly storage charge?

Sure would be nice to move all my grain to a terminal at harvest if the storage costs are reasonable. Then not have to deal with plowing snow, spring break up, poor road conditions, etc.

Would not be much to do all winter though.

[malleefarmer]

Delivery is nov,dec,jan and a recieval fee of $11 is paid.
Then i think its $1.50 per month from march until sold

[cityguy]

323,000 tonnes of commercial storage in one spot !!! Holy Cow. I was wrong on the primary elevator space as some has been added in the past few years. There's 5.65 million tonnes with about 325 elevators. There are only three elevators over 100,000 tonnes storage. Two are owned by Viterra (which were actually owned by Elders in the 80's). Believe those two elevators were built back in the 20's/ 30's. The other is a farmer owned elevator in the heart of CWB durum country. Then there are maybe 5 elevators over 50,000 tonnes - 2 of which are owned by Cargill in Alberta and were built by the government in the 20's.

Certainly two very different handling systems. Maybe that's a function of the CWB system that decided many years ago that there's no point paying companies to store grain, may as well store it on farm and call it into the system only when they need it.

Am wondering if there's any other major exporter that has such a small ratio of primary elevator space to exports out there?