IT HAS been obscured by the big NSW turnaround, but Victoria is once again enjoying an excellent cropping season, which could push to be the biggest on record.
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As of Tuesday GrainCorp had received 1.345 million tonnes in Victoria, with 648,300 in the past week.
A grain site near Serpentine has reopened to deal with the influx of grain, and there is still plenty more to come.
GrainCorp site manager Nathan Tepper said Wednesday's result of 13,500 tonnes was believed to be a daily record and that with the focus shifting to wheat it was expected there would be a run of big days over the next week.
He said the Murtoa site in the Wimmera had so far taken around 140,000 tonnes and would continue to take significant volumes right up until Christmas before the harvest tapered off.
It is a similar story at Nhill, where GrainCorp site manager Fraser Kent took 13,160 tonnes on Tuesday, before a localised downpour of 20mm immediately over the Nhill township slowed things down from Wednesday afternoon.
He said he expected things to slow off prior to Christmas.
"We are hearing the odd farmer here and there has finished and we'll see quite a few people finishing in the next week," Mr Kent said
He said it was another good season for the Nhill district, in the west Wimmera.
"We've had a good run of years, going back to 18-19, where we were the biggest site in the GrainCorp network, last year, which passed our previous record and this year, where we might beat it again.
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Similar to Murtoa, Nhill has taken over 140,000 tonnes of grain and is expected to crack the 200,000 tonne mark.
Further to the west, GrainCorp also expects its Lillimur site, west of Kaniva, to break records, while the Natimuk site, south-west of Horsham, will also go close.
Throughout the central Wimmera, cereal crops in excess of 5 tonnes a hectare are common, grading slightly lower to the north and higher in the southern Wimmera.
Quality has generally been good, with a wide spread of wheat segregations from hard to ASW opened, while barley has generally been either malt or top quality feed, with some downgraded from malt to feed for screenings or black tipping.
While GrainCorp and other bulk handlers are revelling in the big volumes it has also caused headaches.
Mr Kent and Mr Tepper reported relatively smooth turnarounds at their larger sites, but delivery times have slowed at some sites and segregations and even entire sites are filling quickly.
It has led to GrainCorp opening previously mothballed 'flex' sites in central Victoria and far southern NSW, with Tandarra, near Serpentine and Barnes Crossing, near Moama, both reopening.
New bunkers have been built at Murchison East, Elmore, Deniliquin, Dookie and Berrybank.
With the pressure on to free up more space, GrainCorp is well underway on its outloading program, sending grain both to port and to domestic end users and freeing up more space.