A PAIR of enterprising farming brothers are offering South East growers a new delivery option for wheat and canola, after the purchase of Viterra's major Millicent site late last year.
Squib Group, owned and operated by Malcolm and Thomas Earl, bought Viterra's smaller site in 2019 and the larger site for $1.5 million in November to expand their canola crushing capacity which is operated from re-designed seed cleaning sheds on the outskirts of Millicent.
The business is expecting to take 10,000 tonnes of wheat this harvest, with grain trader ADM buying from the site and shipping the grain out of Portland, Vic.
Viterra's Millicent site was one of 17 shut in 2019, with the grain handler nominating changing grower delivery patterns and efficiencies as the reasons for the closures.
It has been a whirlwind couple of years for the Earl brothers, who started their canola crushing business partly due to the hole left for local growers by GrainCorp - which shut its Millicent crushing plant in 2016 to upgrade its operations at Numurkah, Vic - and as a way to complement their existing operations.
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"We've got a piggery as well and there's a few dairies around so we thought we'd start a small crushing plant to see how it went," Malcolm said.
Coming from trade backgrounds, Malcolm said the brothers had saved significantly in set-up costs by doing most of the work themselves.
"We started off with a small machine and with no knowledge of how a canola press worked and finding it hard to source information - we had all of the headaches in the world to start with," he said.
"We persisted with it, went to China and bought a different style of machine which worked really well.
"We started off supplying a local feedlot with oil, used the canola meal ourselves and for dairies."
Squib Group also makes feed pellets at the plant, but with 10,000t of canola grown within 10 kilometres of Millicent, Malcolm said the time was right to expand the crushing side of the business.
Malcolm said they had allocated one of the sheds at their new site - which has a total storage capacity of 140,000t - to grains and oilseeds, while they planned to install a 100t a day crushing plant in the other.
We've doubled our capacity since last year and eventually we want to get all the canola in the area.
- MALCOLM EARL
Squib Group presently crushes 20t a day and will reach 40t with the arrival of more crushing equipment in a matter of weeks.
"We've got a plant now that's got potential to produce 12,000t a year," Malcolm said.
"We don't do anywhere near that now but we'll get there eventually.
"We've doubled our capacity since last year and eventually we want to get all the canola in the area.
"We're just looking for other markets for our oil - the meal is no problem because 75 per cent of dairies around here would use canola meal as a protein source.
"We also sell it to piggeries, feedlots and use it in our pelleting plant."
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Malcolm said many local farmers had stopped growing canola once the GrainCorp plant shut, so they hoped it would find its way back into local croppers' rotations.
The brothers were surprised by the amount of deliveries into their new storage site in its first harvest back up and running, with in excess of 15,000t of wheat, canola and beans taken.
"We thought we might get a bit of wheat storage in here, but this has been up and running to what it was doing five years ago when Viterra had it," Malcolm said.
They said support from local farmers had been invaluable in their successful expansion and they had received good feedback on the new storage option.
"They're getting a good price for their grain and they can bring it in locally, which saves on transport costs," Malcolm said.
"We're hoping to get more buyers on board to do pricing here next harvest."
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