Pre-sale access to under & overweight bale data has again been raised as an issue at various levels. The most recent EDI committee meeting discussed options for declaring the bale weights in electronic catalogues.
For those interested, the EDI committee minutes, correspondence from the WIEDPC to NASC, and ACWE to both broker associations, are useful resources as to the ‘state of play’.
This issue is not new, and I recall developing software more than 15 years ago to reduce the impact of under & over weight bales in optimising unit configurations at the dump. In recent years this is the 4th time it has been raised at the EDI committee.
As there does not appear to be any success in buyers making claims for bales sold outside the current regulations, making further moves via a ‘commercial solution’ unlikely.
Our quick survey of approx. 200,000 bales ‘shipped’ shows more than 500 bales overweight, and 10 underweight; with 50% of these bales direct from an auction sale.
It is likely that something will change at the EDI level, with options likely to involve:
- Transmitting each bale, and weight, with the catalogue – as proposed by AWEX. I doubt this will get approved due to the cost of such a proposal, in relation to the incidence.
- Adding new catalogue symbols – given the compliance rate of such symbols, this is not a preferred option.
- Transmitting the lightest and heaviest bales – this would not add to the catalogue transmission size as it is proposed to use ‘spare’ space. It does not show how many under or over weights!
- Transmitting the number of ‘over & under’ bales – similar to transmitting as in c) but it does not show by how much under and over. The industry standard statistic CV could also be transmitted to show weight distribution?
Of course the dump will continue to have access to each bale individual weight as part of the wdo/invoice transmissions.
The industry is seeking comments from members.
Updated 25/11
There appears to be much confusion regarding current bale weight regulations - or lack of - so we have included the latest known AWEX statement:
"Wool bales should not exceed 204 kg, and shall not be less than 110kg (except for wool less than 18.6um, which may have a minimum gross weight of 90kg). Bales are usually between 140 and 200kg".
One dump has expressed the concern that "even if the weight is declared as 204kg, transmitted as such, the bale weights are often well over that limit due to the broker not doing the weight adjustment, and hence the grower not being paid. The OH&S and industrial regulations need confirming".