SunRice has recently announced, with deep regret, a further reconfiguration of our Riverina operations, which will result in a further 100 job losses in 2020. This announcement is very upsetting, particularly given the reliance of many regional communities on a vibrant Riverina rice industry.
SunRice took significant steps (including carrying over crop from C18 and C19, and offering record prices to growers in August 2019), in a bid to stimulate plantings for C20. This has enabled a milling program to be maintained at the Deniliquin and Leeton mills until at least early 2021.
We realise it has been an incredibly difficult environment in which to secure affordable water and we thank all growers who were able to plant. However, smaller plantings for C20 will result in a reduction to a single shift operation at each mill, commencing the end of the first quarter of 2020. As a result, we have announced today that 80 Riverina manufacturing and support staff will be affected. Another 20 staff at SunRice’s storage subsidiary, Australian Grain Storage, will also be impacted.
Whilst we acknowledge the significance of the current drought, SunRice also believes the impact has been exacerbated through water policy settings. SunRice, working closely in conjunction with the Ricegrowers' Association of Australia (RGA), commissioned an external report from analysts RMCG to investigate these issues. Whilst commissioned by SunRice, the authors' findings and recommendations contained in the external report are their own.
We believe the RMCG report clearly identifies a series of unintended consequences of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the broader national water reform process. The report highlights that these consequences are having a disproportionate impact on farmers who rely on General Security water to grow annual crops, like rice, maize and fodder, in the southern Murray-Darling Basin.
SunRice, alongside the RGA, is engaging both Federally and with the NSW Government with the aim of addressing the inequities. We remain committed to working with Governments to identify win-win solutions that preserve the original intended outcomes of the Australian water reform process and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to ensure a vibrant future for the world-class Australian rice industry.
We have every confidence that if changes are made to policy settings to address these inequities, the rice industry will be able to bounce back, as it did after the Millennium drought.