Aus help for Egypt grain headache

Grain has generally been stored in old-style jute bags in open sheds and there are significant losses to spoilage and pest damage.

However, the beleaguered Middle Eastern nation is not in a position to make a large-scale investment in a network of permanent storage.

An Australian business has played a role in creating a low-cost alternative, utilising the same silo bags that are commonly used by Australian growers.

Ian Metherall, of Silo Bags Australia, a grain storage business based in Nagambie, Victoria, said his company was forging a strong reputation in North Africa, with a successful trial in wheat storage in Egypt following a similar project in Sudan.

He said the company had now been asked to design a complete storage system for a silo-bag based wheat storage system, including IT systems for stocks and information.

“We’ve come up with a system that monitors carbon dioxide levels in the bag for quality assurance, and we’ve joined with Canberra-based business Connexxion to develop a software system which will manage stocks information," Mr Metherall said.

He also said the system would utilise radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for better stocks control.

The Egyptian wheat storage industry is big business.

Mr Metherall said there was three million tonnes of storage at present, with the vast majority still stored in 100 kilogram bags.

He said moving wheat from the paddock to the receival site in Egypt was a laborious process, which involved in-paddock thrashing, using a stationary machine, and the grain being bagged, then unbagged before a final packing process that can take three months.

“It’s a pretty old fashioned system, you’ll occasionally see donkeys up there on the weighbridge, and most of the grain comes in by the uteful, so there’s a lot of scope for modernisation,” Mr Metherall said.

He said a key concern of the Egyptian government was cutting wastage and improving food security.

The issue of food security is a big deal in Egypt, which relies on wheat as its staple food. There is a history of riots in Egypt over the past 40 years connected to rising bread prices.

“Waste can account for up to 30pc of grain stored in Africa, so it’s something the government can do that will mean more wheat," he said.

“Using more hygienic systems will also cut contamination."

He said he had been contacted by Egyptian authorities and shown them the silo bags at work at Port Sudan, in Sudan, before they were asked to do a pilot project in Egypt.

“We have cut wastage from 15pc to 0.75pc at Port Sudan and there’s real interest in our systems, which can be implemented relatively cheaply through this region.”

Over time, Mr Metherall said he expected the Egyptian government would switch its storage network from sheds to grain bags.

“It will also free up funds as the bags take up less room than the sheds and they will be able to sell off land.”

He said there was no reason large volumes of grain could not be stored in bags.

“There is scope to store a lot of grain in bags - in Argentina around 70 million tonnes of grain a year is stored in bags, so it can work on a big scale.”

The bags being used at present in the Middle Eat are the 90 tonne bags available to Aussie growers.

Silo Bags Australia has entered into joint ventures with local Egyptian and United Arab Emirates based companies to develop the Egyptian market further and has also opened an office in Sharjah, in the UAE.

Australian growers will benefit from the technology Silo Bags Australia is developing, such as the bag monitoring systems and the RFID tags, which will also be available in Australia this year.