Day seven (Thursday) - daily summary

Author : Brady Green, NE Nabawa

Kuwait is our final official engagement on this trip, on arrival you can see this country does not focus on the bling and glamour that is Dubai. This country has a lot of wealth but they don't look to tourism as an industry of importance.

As we arrived at the Kuwait Flour Mills were small trucks and utes lined up and spilling out into the streets, these people were here to pick up their orders of grain for feeding their camels cows and sheep,it was organized chaos .

Kuwait food company is govt owned, they prefer to buy Australian wheat and barley and have done so for 30 years, they take 30,000 ton per month of barley and 20,000 ton per month of wheat.

Salah is the MD , he was a very pleasant man who speaks very highly of the relationship we have. He spoke about during the Iraq invasion how Australian soldiers cleared the silos and buildings here of bombs and mines so they could begin business again. The responsibility this company has is to feed their population, they are currently building silos that will give them storage for 375000 ton, this will feed the people for just over 3 months, hence once again we get an understanding of why food security is such a high priority to the people in the middle east. Salah spoke of 2008 when they were in the position to but grain, they had lots of money but were shocked to find export bans all around the world, on of the only countries that could supply grain were Australia. This again strengthened the relationship which is why they are prepared to pay premium.

After hearing so much complaining about quality decline in our wheat it was nice to listen to a large importer speak so highly of our grain and the way we conduct business.

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Kuwait Flour Mills & Bakeries - Kuwait City, Kuwait

Some photos from the last official appointment of the delegation, being the Kuwait Flour Mills & Bakeries KFMB.

KFMB use a large amount of feed barley for both compound feed and for the bagging of feed barley for the Bedouin, but they are also a massive flour milling operation with 225,000mt of grain storage, multiple mills and 9 bakeries giving them a market share of more than 70% of all baked products in Kuwait.

There is an additional 150,000mt of grain storage being built on site now for food security purposes.

More words will follow tomorrow.

Day six (Wednesday) : daily summary

Author : Jon Hasson, Ballidu

Bus trip of one and half hours to neighboring Emirate state of Abu Dhabi to visit the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority and then Al GhurairFoods flour mills at the Jebel Ali port.

Abu Dhabi contributes about 60% of the UAE GDP and 90 % of this revenue comes from oil. They are highly industrialized and highly developed and show no signs of slowing down with new building and infrastructure in progress everywhere. Now I am beginning to understand the scale and thirst the world has for our iron ore. Upwards of 80% of the population are expats.

The Food Authority was established to ensure food safety, food quality and food research and development. We gave a PowerPoint presentation of the CBH Group which was again well received. We them went to an impromptu meeting with officials from the State Fund for Development and were informed of the new food security project which comprises of 50x 15,000mt at the Fujeirah port.

Our last stop was a tour of the Al Ghurair mill at Jebel Ali port. The tour was not extensive, but some quick facts : they import 1.5M mt of wheat ach year which about 120k is Australian, they mill and convert many other commodities to service countries across the world, one market is canola l into Europe. T is ok to import GM canola oil but not GM canola seed. Go figure !. Grain is stored in 24 x 11,000mt concrete silos, 19 meters in diameter and 54 meters tall with 300mm thick walls. The Government is planning to build a freight airport adjacent to the shipping port, with intention to guarantee movement of freight from ship to plane or vice versa in 30 minutes.

Trip observations so far :
Middle East millers want quality wheat but price is always king. These guys run highly efficient businesses and know exactly what they want and invariably get it. They are very friendly and accommodating hosts, however their lives appear to revolve around business, work and religion. They have incredible wealth. Australia is a small fish in a big pond. What CBH Group has is unique in the world grain industry and every group we have met has been genuinely impressed with our structure and the fact we have control over so much of the supply chain. I firmly believe any attempt to change this structure will only result in short term gain at the expense of long term stability and market advantage.

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