The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today accepted GrainCorp's wheat port access arrangements for October 2011 to September 2014.
"GrainCorp’s current access arrangements have successfully allowed access to GrainCorp’s port terminal services by wheat exporters," ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said. "The ACCC decided that it is appropriate for the existing arrangements to largely continue."
These arrangements are a publish-negotiate-arbitrate approach to access provision with capacity allocated between users on a first come, first served basis.
The arrangements replace GrainCorp’s current undertaking, which was accepted by the ACCC on 29 September 2009. GrainCorp's undertaking relates to the provision of access to services for the export of bulk wheat at seven grain terminals operated by GrainCorp in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. These terminals are:
- Queensland: Fisherman Islands, Gladstone and Mackay
- New South Wales: Carrington and Port Kembla, and
- Victoria: Geelong and Portland.
GrainCorp must have access arrangements in place by 1 October 2011 in order to retain accreditation to export bulk wheat under the Wheat Export Marketing Act 2008.
The ACCC identified some areas of the existing arrangements for improvement. These include achieving more economically efficient use of port terminal facilities. GrainCorp has included measures to encourage return of unwanted capacity at peak times and to increase transparency regarding its system of capacity allocation.
Other changes from the current arrangements are that the ACCC will have the ability to intervene if there is a material change to GrainCorp’s port loading protocols that raises concern under the terms of the undertaking, information gathering powers for the ACCC and a requirement for GrainCorp to provide to the ACCC a copy of the access provision terms to its own trading division.
GrainCorp provided a revised undertaking incorporating these changes to the proposed undertaking it had lodged on 22 September 2010 in response to an amendment notice given to it by the ACCC.