T-PORTS will begin receivals at Lucky Bay from 2019, rather than this season as originally planned, with the grain trade wanting to see the completed facility before it begins pricing into the site.
The $115 million project will feature two bunker sites with more than 500,000 tonnes of storage, a port facility with a further 27,000t of storage in steel silos and a state-of-the-art transhipment vessel with 3500t capacity.
It was previously hoped deliveries to the site could begin from October.
While construction work has continued at full pace at the Lucky Bay and Lock bunker sites, with the first drive over hopper stackers arriving at Lock recently, the procurement of equipment for the bunker sites and the port site is continuing.
Related reading: Lucky Bay site set to become reality
Chief executive officer Kieran Carvill said the transhipment vessel, which launched from China in May, still needed extra work done before it could be used at Lucky Bay.
“At the moment, it’s just a basic vessel, there’s still handling systems that need to be installed such as loading bins and a bucket elevator,” he said.
Mr Carvill said the reality was, without the port facility finalised, the trade were not prepared to take on risk and price into the site.
Despite the trade’s present hesitations, Mr Carvill said he had no doubt there would be committed support in coming years.
“We’ve had discussions with four of the biggest trading houses who said they’d be happy to use the facilities, but they want to test it before they have the confidence to post prices,” he said.
“The bottom line is we don’t want rush things and to do something in the short-term that would make a mess of something that is a long-term investment. Holding off to next year is not something we desired, it’s taken a lot of work and a lot of late nights to get this far, but at the end of the day we had to be realistic. We want to start at the right time, to get the right result for growers.”
Mr Carvill said even if the trade had the confidence to post prices before seeing the finalised site, there was unlikely to be much throughput this coming season regardless, due to the adverse seasonal conditions, particularly on the eastern part of the Eyre Peninsula.
“Farmers will want to sell off the combine this season, they won’t have that desire to hold material in stock,” he said.
Mr Carvill said he was confident the site would be financially viable in the future even in tight years such as this one, but it did not make sense to rush the project through when it was unlikely there would be significant tonnages coming in.
“We can now take the time to make sure everything is perfect,” he said.
“The feedback we’ve got from growers is – don’t make a mistake by rushing things and breaking something that is very much needed.”
