Australia’s largest grain growers cooperative and grains exporter, CBH Group, Perth, said on Sept. 6 that it will proceed with a proposed facility for the import and storage of dry (granular) fertilizer products and UAN at Kwinana in Western Australia. The project received conditional environmental approval by the Western Australia Environmental Protection Authority earlier this summer (GM June 11, p. 30).
The new facility will include a UAN ship unloading and transfer pipeline, which runs along the existing Kwinana Grain Terminal jetty, as well as 32,000 mt of UAN storage in two 16,000 mt tanks. There will also be 55,000 mt of granular fertilizer storage in a new warehouse, as well as an administration office, landscaping, and security.
CBH currently leases storage facilities for granular fertilizer at the port, and has said consolidating into a single purpose-built facility will “dramatically” reduce the supply chain costs, with savings passed on to growers.
CBH said its fertilizer business, CBH Fertiliser, has achieved year-over-year growth of around 30 percent since it entered the market in 2015 and has reached maximum capacity at its four currently leased facilities. It said Western Australia UAN application rates are growing 12 percent per year, with storage capacity currently not keeping pace, leading to shortages in supply at critical times.
The final plan is down from the original proposal, which had included UAN capacity of 48,000 mt and granular at 80,000 mt, respectively.