Capacity available at Australian grain ports in 2024-25

Australia's largest bulk grain handlers have millions in tonnes of unallocated loading capacity at their port terminals in the October 2024-September 2025 marketing year.

Bulk handlers GrainCorp, Viterra and CBH record at least 3.7mn t of available capacity across 17 port terminals on Australia's east and west coast in 2024-25. Shipping capacity has been stretched in past years, because of record bumper harvests. This led to the expansion of mobile shiploaders to ease bottlenecks at export terminals.

Viterra — which covers the southern states of South Australia and Victoria — indicates available capacity of almost 2.5mn t in 2024-25, of which 540,000t is at its Port Adelaide outer harbour. Available capacity is lower at GrainCorp and CBH, at 400,000t and 870,000t respectively. Additional capacity is available at GrainCorp's Fisherman Islands, Carrington and Port Kembla and Geelong terminals in New South Wales, although exact quantities are not provided.

Spare capacity at CBH terminals in Western Australia (WA) represents just 4pc of the 19.5mn t in total port shipping capacity for 2024-25 and 2pc of total capacity at the Kwinana facility. The Kwinana port has a maximum outloading capacity of 5000 t/hr and ships more than half of WA's total grain production on average each year, according to company data.

Australia is forecast to export 23mn t of wheat and 5.6mn t of barley in the 2024-25 marketing year, according to the US Department of Agriculture. But wheat exports will have to pick up from current levels to meet this target. Australia exported an average of 1.79mn t/month of wheat in the current marketing year to June, according to the Australia Bureau of Statistics. It will have to export at least 1.92mn t/month in 2024-25 to meet the USDA target.

Further difficulty may arise if shipments to China, Australia's primary wheat export destination, slow in 2024-25. Current demand from China has been notably absent compared with the same time last year, according to market participants.