WA ag machinery dealers lead the market in combine harvester sales with 415 units sold last financial year

Jun 27, 2023

The Western Australian new agriculture machinery market is leading the way with 415 combine harvester units sold, as well as 1589 tractors in the 12 months to June.

The State’s sales figures were presented by Kynetec crop subscription services senior manager Melinda Haley at the Tractor and Machinery Association of Australia’s Annual Conference, titled “Building for the long haul”, in Sydney last month, which attracted a record “sell out” crowd as well as sponsorship packages.

Ms Haley presented the figures in an industry update, which showed that WA was the leader in combine harvester sales the last financial year, up 20 per cent on 2021/22 figures, with the majority of sales between January 1 and June 30, at 326 — up 78 per cent on the same period the year previous.

Tractor sales were also 24 per cent up across the State, the 1589 units adding to the national total of 16,230, which was down five per cent.

Aidan Smith

Ms Haley said the sales, supported by a record $108 billion (March 2023) in bank lending practices to farmers due to farm land value increases, record grain yields and “good commodity prices”, meant “agriculture is in a good space”.

“Agriculture has been expanding and growing,” Ms Haley said.

“There’s always been seasonal lending for cropping purposes, and asset purchases like machinery and land, but coming off record tractor sales, good commodity prices and seasonal conditions, low interest rates, the Instant Asset Write Off scheme and healthy Farm Management Deposits, ag is in a good space.”

Bank lending to agriculture has risen from $60 billion in March 2014 to $108.9 billion in March this year.

Ms Haley said should interest rates continue to rise, and conditions worsen, farmers needed to think about how they were going to service their debts.

“Farmers should think about their cash flow — what they have to spend money on, as opposed to what they want to spend money on,” she said.

She said while the value of farm land had increased, more than 100 per cent in some parts of the country, there was still a need to ensure the balance sheet was in a position that debt could be serviced.

Aidan Smith

Ms Haley also said the tractor and machinery industry’s Business Barometer Survey was also returning in September to help assess “the feeling on the ground” and “what’s happening at a local level” within the agricultural machinery sales industry.

“It will run until we have the appropriate number of responses and then the TMA will decide how to distribute that out,” she said.

The survey was paused for a brief period due to changes within the organisation and Kynetec coming on board to work with the TMA.

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