Grain storage

noflippinguse said:

Central storage is best for people who grow shite wheat. Since the people who grow good wheat seem to pay for expensive machines to clean the other owners shite wheat. But I expect they really just mix the average wheat and the shite wheat together anyway.

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The shite wheat goes in the feed bin and all CS will have plenty of that, anything that can have some value added will.

As for their being no demand for the CS in the future, well as long as there is Arable farming in the UK there will be a need for grain stores.

@Clive have you some costings to collect, clean, dry and store a 1000t of Wheat please?

It will need collecting from farm either straight off the field or from the yard. Going to be cutting as soon as it will go through the combine, so make sure you've plenty of gas in the drier tank. I predict average moisture will be about 16.9%. I've only enough concrete to store half a days cutting and we don't like to keep the Contractors two 780's waiting.
Got some Solstice, should be Gp1 spec, but if you wouldn't mind testing each load as it comes in for Protein and Hagberg that'd be great, if you could upload this onto a website so I can access it from my smartphone in the combine that would be good too.

Anything that doesn't quite make the grade if you could pop into the Gp2 pile, I'd appreciate that.

Got some Gp3's think there should be a premium there, but couple of fields yield like no tomorrow, so its usually just feed grade from them. What I'm saying is could you test each load of these too and segregate.

Oh that Solstice, might be a few Ergots in there (I'm a shite farmer), so if you wouldn't mind running it through the optical sorter.

Think that about covers it for now...

Hanslope said:

The shite wheat goes in the feed bin and all CS will have plenty of that, anything that can have some value added will.

As for their being no demand for the CS in the future, well as long as there is Arable farming in the UK there will be a need for grain stores.

@Clive have you some costings to collect, clean, dry and store a 1000t of Wheat please?

It will need collecting from farm either straight off the field or from the yard. Going to be cutting as soon as it will go through the combine, so make sure you've plenty of gas in the drier tank. I predict average moisture will be about 16.9%. I've only enough concrete to store half a days cutting and we don't like to keep the Contractors two 780's waiting.
Got some Solstice, should be Gp1 spec, but if you wouldn't mind testing each load as it comes in for Protein and Hagberg that'd be great, if you could upload this onto a website so I can access it from my smartphone in the combine that would be good too.

Anything that doesn't quite make the grade if you could pop into the Gp2 pile, I'd appreciate that.

Got some Gp3's think there should be a premium there, but couple of fields yield like no tomorrow, so its usually just feed grade from them. What I'm saying is could you test each load of these too and segregate.

Oh that Solstice, might be a few Ergots in there (I'm a shite farmer), so if you wouldn't mind running it through the optical sorter.

Think that about covers it for now...

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So the £10/tonne annual charge covers as you detail it:

Collection
Weighing
Testing
Drying
Sorting if required
Storage
Conditioning
Loading out
Transport to final destination

If it does then ok it starts to make a bit more sense.

warksfarmer said:

So the £10/tonne annual charge covers as you detail it:

Collection
Weighing
Testing
Drying
Sorting if required
Storage
Conditioning
Loading out
Transport to final destination

If it does then ok it starts to make a bit more sense.

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Everything but drying is included in the standing charge but it also includes the cost of maintenance, repairs, upgrades, end of season cleaning, assurance costs, staff training plus all those little things that we forget that have to be done and the cost of which for a farm arent really noticed but on a 100,000 tonne store cost a few pounds here and there such as postage costs stationery tea and bikkies for the drivers which just go through as general farm overheads

rob1 said:

Everything but drying is included in the standing charge but it also includes the cost of maintenance, repairs, upgrades, end of season cleaning, assurance costs, staff training plus all those little things that we forget that have to be done and the cost of which for a farm arent really noticed but on a 100,000 tonne store cost a few pounds here and there such as postage costs stationery tea and bikkies for the drivers which just go through as general farm overheads

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Camgrain it includes drying from 16%, i.e. send grain in at 15.99% and there's no penalty. After that drying £1.5/t per %m.c..
@warksfarmer charge also includes bad debt insurance, store maintenance, Mycotoxins tests as required.

Transport to final destination not really, but will be sold on a delivered basis as Camgrain have such efficiencies in loading and tipping that one lorry can do many times that of haulier collecting ex. farm

The two big ones on the charge are collection from farm, this is very prompt and they work with you, so if you want half a dozen lorries before 8am, it can happen.

And the drying, being able to cut at 20% with £6/t known drying charge and zero hassle is worth a lot, if it can turn borderline Milling into full milling and let you crack on with the next crop.

You really have to compare like with like. Comparing CS with a concrete floor with a roof over it, is not really a fair comparison. It's the value it adds on farm, through more and better premiums, better timeliness, getting more from machines, taking the stress out of harvest. With my old bins and ambient air underfloor drying/ventilation wet harvests were stressful, I don't miss that one bit.

Nor do I miss lorries turning up at irregular times throughout the year wanting loading.

Hanslope said:

Camgrain it includes drying from 16%, i.e. send grain in at 15.99% and there's no penalty. After that drying £1.5/t per %m.c..
@warksfarmer charge also includes bad debt insurance, store maintenance, Mycotoxins tests as required.

Transport to final destination not really, but will be sold on a delivered basis as Camgrain have such efficiencies in loading and tipping that one lorry can do many times that of haulier collecting ex. farm

The two big ones on the charge are collection from farm, this is very prompt and they work with you, so if you want half a dozen lorries before 8am, it can happen.

And the drying, being able to cut at 20% with £6/t known drying charge and zero hassle is worth a lot, if it can turn borderline Milling into full milling and let you crack on with the next crop.

You really have to compare like with like. Comparing CS with a concrete floor with a roof over it, is not really a fair comparison. It's the value it adds on farm, through more and better premiums, better timeliness, getting more from machines, taking the stress out of harvest. With my old bins and ambient air underfloor drying/ventilation wet harvests were stressful, I don't miss that one bit.

Nor do I miss lorries turning up at irregular times throughout the year wanting loading.

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So your suggesting that group 1 spec solstice via camgrain sells for more money than group 1 solstice off farm?

So in summary Clive what you are saying is your commercial store makes sense for you and the merchant. So farmers, that is all money that is being lost out of the chain. Work closer to your end market and cut out the leeches.

ace said:

So in summary Clive what you are saying is your commercial store makes sense for you and the merchant. So farmers, that is all money that is being lost out of the chain. Work closer to your end market and cut out the leeches.

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Where Clive's store comes into play is for people like me where we only had one drying store (under floor) and one tip store. So when we used to grow osr we had to cut it and dump it in the drying shed to dry. We couldn't grow barley or early wheats because the osr was in the shed.
So it's dried and then put into Clive's store via frontier making room for wheat. We did this for about 6 yrs before putting up another shed which for 1500t was £65,000 but no drying system. All the steel was bought in then it was fabricated in the workshop by local engineers. We used a bit of steel from an old shed and bought new concrete panels and cladding. Then had people in to concrete the floor. Electrics done in house as well.

Haulage to CS is usually on a tiered price that varies with distance from the store, measured in zones radiating from the store to the farm address. Not perfect but it means that the farmers closest to the store aren't subsidising the ones further away.

Priority for hauliers depends on the relationship between the store/farmer & the haulier. Wilts Grain will take in 7 days/week at extended hours in peak periods which may or may not also apply to commercial stores too. Who would you rather haul to - a 10,000t commercial store with one intake 60 miles away that 1 truck can do 3 loads/day or a 100,000t central store with 3 - 5 intakes where the haul is much shorter & they can do 5 - 7 loads/day? It's a bit like asking how long a piece of string is & depends on the individual stores.

Blending is always a contentious subject. If the CS isn't getting paid any more for a farmer's load that is over spec then why not use the difference to blend up slightly below spec grain? Since much of the CS grain is marketed in a pool it all gets averaged out anyway. The problems occur when there isn't enough over spec grain to blend up the under spec stuff. The farmer gets the quality results from each load within a couple of hours so he will know if his grain is above or below grade. He also relies on the pool not to fiddle the books on quality but this must be the same for merchant pools too.

If the farmer sells over spec grain to a merchant then the mill/maltster or merchant pockets the bonus except for osr. CS pays that extra to the farmer depending on how the pool works, capturing the added value.

For what it is worth I don't use CS but do the deals at the time normally involving virtual storage and harvest pools which means all osr lifted at harvest & sent to a boat, merchant store or straight to the crush. Once it leaves the farm I'm not too bothered where it has gone (unless the merchant goes tits up) & pay a virtual rent until I lock it out when I get paid in full minus the rent & handling charges. This year I used ADM Direct, Frontier & United Oilseeds.

To be honest the best one I used was Saxon's buy back - sell at harvest, get paid minus a £20/t deposit for what is effectively a May delivered Erith call option. If the market rose I got the £20/t back plus the profit in May. If the market fell I would get a bill if it fell. Simples - cash AND carry. I don't have the cash spare to buy into Wilts Grain so will rely on paying a bit more to a merchant to do the virtual storage instead. Long term, I'd be slightly better off owning the storage asset as long as I can sell it on at the end which has always been ok so far. The decision is whether to take the risk of this so-called ponzi scheme by buying into CS rather than pay a couple of quid more to the merchant who could just as easily go bust between the time I move the grain off farm & getting paid having closed out the storage deal.

The Frontier Crush scheme for osr was £3.50/t handling fee plus 5.5 pence/tonne/day minimum 22 weeks storage then 4p/t/day after that. I ended up paying £13/t to watch the osr market fall & not have the cash until now either. Hey ho. If Clive stores for Frontier then it sounds as though he wouldn't have got more than his £8-9/t but I can't begrudge Frontier for needing a fee for the admin. I didn't pay Frontier for the haulage from my farm to wherever it went to.

Clive said:

I store for merchants rather than direct so you can see what storage here would cost you by talking to any merchant

Around £8-9/t to store inclusive of all handling, wieghbridge etc

Cleaning (if you needed or wanted it ). Is a couple of £ a tonne - why in spec wheat would need cleaning though I have no idea ? It's something we do in odd years like 2012 for low bushel or the occasional distressed sample etc certainly not routine , around here farmers seem to be able to grow in spec commodities straight from fields !

Drying (if you need as per merchants charges which are very similar to cs rates I believe)

Haulage depends how far away you are - most stuff that comes to us is within 25mile radius so £4/t ish . As for logistics at harvest I know of no cs that runs it's own ? They are as dependant as anyone on 3rd party hauliers and I reckon when the pressure is on a big merchant would be higher up their list than a cs ! When we ran truck merchants work would always get priority as they were the guys that kept us going through quiet times

You pay for what you use in our store - you don't subsidise the transport costs of another farmer who sends stuff in from 100miles away, you don't pay towards cleaning other people's poor samples and you get paid out based on your quality coming in not the result of blending your good wheat with someone else's poor stuff

Most importantly I DONT CHARGE YOU TO BUILD THE STORE IN THE FIRST PLACE !

As said if you consistently produce sh!t quality low bushel, ergot infested wheat then cs starts to make sense - I just feel for the good farmers that send in quality to blend that sh!t with who also clearly don't mind helping you out with cleaner running costs and if they are further away seem to have no problem chipping in for your fuel ! Thank god the world is full of generous people !

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I doubt your stores cost nothing to build, so your customers will be paying for the cost of building them! (maybe not in a lump sum but they will be paying you !!)

Central storage works for some people
Commercial storage works for other people

My own opinion on Central Storage and Commercial storage is that i would prefer to use my money to build an on farm store as this is a long term asset to my business and in the future it could be used for alternative ways of making money.
Whether central or a commercial store you the farmer are paying for the costs of the store construction at some point and also for that business to make profit. and once they have paid for the original construction costs you need to keep paying them forever, but my own store will be costing me next to nothing.

Drying - On farm, CS or commercial it is going to cost you the farmer money to 'do it yourself' or have someone do it for you.
Cleaning - On farm, CS or commercial it is going to cost you the farmer money.
Ergot - as above
Low bushel weight - as above
Milling spec upgrade - as above

Transport - I am yet to find a company that does this for free, from my own store it only needs transporting once and from a CS or commercial store it needs moving twice.

Clive said:

I'm not pretending my store cost nothing and it's not being paid for - but it's a hell of a lot less than a cs that's for sure

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You keep saying that but not seen anything to back it up yet. Lee says his 1500 tonnes store cost £65000 plus some in house electrics fair enough.
Trouble is he has no drying in that shed, no way of getting it in and out, no weighbridge, no laboratory to Analise EVERY load in and out, no way of conditioning the grain in it, no way of segregating it into many different specs for different outlets or separate crops, no allowance for the value of the site or the costs of getting planning .

How many times have you said on here that farmers dont do their costings fully, add the list above to the £65,000 and you will be pretty close to CS and the flexibility off CS is one of the main benefits particularly for the one man band growing a limited acreage, who doent have the time to faff about drying grain and watching the market and then getting effed about by rejections because the mill bought at the top of the market and wants a reason to lower the price a bit. We haer about it all the time but dont get that with Cs because their labs are as good if not better than the buyers so they dont try it on.

If you want to chuck 1000 tonnes of GP1 into a big heap and hope its all going to get you the premium then yes could do it cheaper than CS, but and as much as some posters think they they produce gold and all the farms who use CS produce ergot infested shite the reality is the end buyers of our wheat demand higher and higher spec and large quantities of it. In twenty years time the vast majority of grain sold to these multinational buyers will come from CS. Small on farm stores with 20 or 30 thousand tonnes will survive if they have a niche market with a specialised product or local feed mill/brewery .
The modern world is a tough place and those that survive will be the big boys, not that I think that this is a good thing but it is fact in this and every other industry and it not going to get any easier, get big or get out

Look abroad Clive, I just googled grain storage in France as an example, over 70% is stored in CS canada stores 15% in their elevators alone, its much the same round the world , farmers make more when they sell together ,so no it isnt going to fail unless those merchants do to CS as they did to the milk co ops, cherry pick the biggest with a premium and then drive down the price to everyone just as the milk buyers did. Without being smug some saw that coming which was one of the reasons I quit milking and sold my quota for 82 pence a litre and invested off farm, best business decision I ever made

rob1 said:

You keep saying that but not seen anything to back it up yet. Lee says his 1500 tonnes store cost £65000 plus some in house electrics fair enough.
Trouble is he has no drying in that shed, no way of getting it in and out, no weighbridge, no laboratory to Analise EVERY load in and out, no way of conditioning the grain in it, no way of segregating it into many different specs for different outlets or separate crops, no allowance for the value of the site or the costs of getting planning .

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Grain goes in by tipping a grain trailer up.
Grain gets pushed up by a 14 yr old telescopic.
Grain gets loaded out by the same machine.
I have a ministry tested weighbridge and every load goes over it.
Every load is moisture, bushel and temp tested.
Shed split into 2 permanently then I can split crossways if required as well.
Allowance of site value - it's ours
No planning as it was a shed upgrade but if it was it was £280 iirc.

I'm missing a drier in that particular shed I agree but I could buy a used 28t mobile for £30k or as mentioned before I have a 800t underfloor, with stirrer drying shed so the reality is wet grain goes in there and dry grain or nearly dry grain goes in the new shed, then upright pedestals condition it.

£30,000/1500t = £20/t to buy it in one year. I believe that's a total of £63/t to 'buy into' my own CS.

I'm missing the full blown analysis equipment, but I tell you what's quite easy is once the grains conditioned is ring up 6 merchants and get them to sample it - its free ! Then take the average and boom! that's what your marketing.

The above is what i'd say 90% of farmers over the world do.

CS is not special so don't try making out it is.

warksfarmer said:

Grain goes in by tipping a grain trailer up.
Grain gets pushed up by a 14 yr old telescopic.
Grain gets loaded out by the same machine.
I have a ministry tested weighbridge and every load goes over it.
Every load is moisture, bushel and temp tested.
Shed split into 2 permanently then I can split crossways if required as well.
Allowance of site value - it's ours
No planning as it was a shed upgrade but if it was it was £280 iirc.

I'm missing a drier in that particular shed I agree but I could buy a used 28t mobile for £30k or as mentioned before I have a 800t underfloor, with stirrer drying shed so the reality is wet grain goes in there and dry grain or nearly dry grain goes in the new shed, then upright pedestals condition it.

£30,000/1500t = £20/t to buy it in one year. I believe that's a total of £63/t to 'buy into' my own CS.

I'm missing the full blown analysis equipment, but I tell you what's quite easy is once the grains conditioned is ring up 6 merchants and get them to sample it - its free ! Then take the average and boom! that's what your marketing.

The above is what is say 90% of farmers over the world do.

CS is not special so don't try making out it is.

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I'm not saying its special, it suits many farmers world wide tho.Google grain storage and you will be surprised how much goes into CS in the world
Dont think you would dry 100,000 tonnes with a 28 t mobile or push it round for long with a 14 yr old loader and where do you tip it while your waiting for the drier to do a load, thought your combine was doing three or four times that much an hour. Of course you save money on drying by hiring a bigger combine to cut when its dry, fair point but that can risk premiums in a bad year which pays for a lot of drying and in my case the straw is worth £200 an acre into the horse market and cutting early when the grain is 18/19% pays several times over in less straw loss

My crystal ball is showing a different picture to Clives. In mine his children have moved to Australia because they were so fed up with him spending all of his time on Forums and telling the world how great he is.
Lee is still Farming on his. 27 th different farming system having made all others fail, but not his fault apparently, it was the manufacturer. He has now put up more small crap sheds. He now spends his time cleaning them and loading lorries.He is still convinced they are Grainstores and believes he is a forward thinker