With grain at the mercy of the elements over the harvest period, the bulk handler rarely gets a year where it does not have to implement an off-specification segregation to meet market needs.

“You really just have to be flexible and see what happens with the weather, and if there is any rain or heat see what it does to the crop,” he said.

Bearing this in mind, the company has decentralised its segregation decision making, placing it in the hands of regional and operational managers in the field.

“Changing the structure has meant the decisions are made by those closely in touch with what is happening in the paddocks,” Mr Griffin said.

He said it remained a difficult task assessing what grades to offer.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to a judgement call, if there is only one truckload of grain with certain issues then you wouldn’t put in the segregation, it comes down to a local needs basis.”

Mr Griffin said the key to segregation issues was timeliness.

“If you wait too long, the demand will disappear, it has to be dealt with decisively.”

On the end-user side, he said there were some examples of niche marketing, where GrainCorp stored a parcel of grain with certain qualities for a user who could value-add the commodity by selling it to a market where a premium for the quality traits is paid.

“If they can add value to a product, they may come to us and offer to pay for the segregation," he said.

“When there’s value in high protein wheat, for example, and it is possible, we will try and run the segregation and add value to the product for the grower.”

However, he said it was a tough task to offer sufficient basic commodity segregations within a reasonable geographic spread for growers without taking on too many niche products.

“It’s hard to manage the standard segregations without going too wide.”