INDONESIA will provide the biggest opportunity for WA grain exports in the next few years and CBH Grain is well positioned to make that happen.
Last week CBH Grain's team, led by South East Asia regional marketing manager Leith Teakle, took some time to explain to South East Asia grower study tour participants how it planned to sell CBH and its product to the region.
South East Asia is currently the largest market for WA wheat and CBH Grain proved this by selling 1.7 million tonnes of it into the area last year.
With its commercial link to South East Asian customers and investment in flour mills throughout the region, CBH wants to make the most of every trade opportunity in the future.
Speaking at Interflour's Research and Development Centre in Selangor, Malaysia, Mr Teakle told the grower group Indonesia was by far the largest destination for Australian wheat followed by Vietnam, Japan and Malaysia.
"Indonesia is currently the third largest importer of wheat globally," Mr Teakle said.
"And statisticians say within five years it will move up the ranks to become the world's largest importer of wheat."
Mr Teakle believed the combination of population growth and flour consumption habits would force the shift to surpass Egypt, which is currently the largest importer of wheat globally.
This meant massive opportunity for WA wheat growers in the near future.
"There are currently 19 operating mills in Indonesia," Mr Teakle said.
"There are another two under construction and rumours there will be three more under construction next year.
"It's a massive growth market."
Indofood's Bogasari mill was the largest in the country (and the world) and along with its sister mill had the capacity to mill between 14,000 and 15,000 tonnes a day.
It holds 50 per cent of the market.
"Vietnam is also a big story for WA wheat, especially at the moment," Mr Teakle said.
"It has experienced huge growth in the last five years with CBH Grain exporting about 300,000t into the country last year and about 400,000t the previous year."
He told growers Malaysia was a far more mature market with consistent trends in buying Australian wheat.
"The population is about 30 million people but it still buys more than one million tonnes of wheat every year," Mr Teakle said.
"Vietnam's population is closer to 100 million and it buys one million tonnes annually.
"Malaysia's flour consumption per capita is a lot higher than a lot of other South East Asian countries.
"If we can get the Vietnamese and Indonesian populations to consume anywhere near the amount of flour that Malaysians consumes then we will have stable markets for our wheat long into the future."
While Malaysia's industry was very well integrated through the use of feed mills, bakeries and poultry farms (which growers on the tour had the opportunity to see), trading into markets such as Thailand was made slightly more difficult by political factors.
But it was some of the smaller centres like Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines which also presented extensive opportunities for CBH Grain's trading team.
Mr Teakle said it was important for CBH to continue its dedicated work with South East Asian quality departments to demonstrate how well Australian wheat could perform in the bread and noodle flour industries.
"It's very important for us to get our foot into the doors of some of the up and coming mills before the USA and Canada do," he said.
"And we'll do that by demonstrating the superiority of our product."
Interflour's Research and Development Centre at University Putra Malaysia in Selangor, Malaysia, undertakes research on grains and flour-based products.
The specialist unit adds value to Interflour's service offering by helping to develop new products and processes for its flour mills and customers, providing training for technical staff and the sales team, collaborating with customers in new product development and undertaking scientific research work on new functional ingredients.