Farm Tender

GTA and AGEA come together

Grain Trade Australia (GTA) and the Australian Grain Exporters Association (AGEA) have agreed to bring the two organisations together as part of grain industry efforts to improve efficiency and effectiveness of industry representation.

AGEA will close its company structure and re-form as the Australian Grain Exporters Council (AGEC), a sector council of Grain Trade Australia. It will be the first sector council to establish in a new model for representation being offered through GTA.

GTA chairman Peter Reading said the organisation had worked closely with AGEA to develop the new sector council structure that offered specialist industry groups the opportunity to meet, form policy, discuss and influence issues in their particular area of interest without the administrative costs involved in operating separate organisations.

“GTA recognises the need for greater efficiency and when AGEA approached us with the desire to develop something new it seemed like a great opportunity,” Mr Reading said.

“GTA already has various committees but they are for specific purposes whereas AGEA was seeking something that would enable them to continue to address issues in relation to the export sector, inside GTA, so we built a model together that we are confident will provide the required specialisation while also working well for GTA’s corporate and governance structure.”

AGEA president Lyndon Asser said the move to a new structure was a logical one for AGEA that was consistent with talk right across the grain industry of the need to streamline industry representative and service structures and recognise how the industry was evolving.

“All of AGEA’s members are also members of GTA and while all are significant exporters they now have significant investment in infrastructure and involvement in the domestic market, which emphasises the nature of the industry as it continues to change,” Mr Asser said.

“There are still significant export issues for us to deal with so a recognised exporter group is important, however we believed we could work with GTA to do this more efficiently and AGEC is the result.

“Our members were in unanimous agreement for our new direction and we are very pleased that GTA was prepared to accommodate the many features we sought to embody in the new sector council.

“The first AGEC meeting is on 9 July and we will continue addressing the same issues we were as AGEA, so work continues without interruption,” he said.

Photo - Peter Reading and Lyndon Asser.