CONSTRUCTION is underway at Graincorp's Coonamble and Gilgandra grain receival sites as the company prepares for a second 'significant' season.

On Friday 27 August work began on what they hope will be a six to eight week project in Coonamble and also kicked off in Gilgandra on Thursday 2 September.

"This is part of the million tonnes of additional storage across our network that we announced earlier," said Graincorp's General Manager of Operations, Nigel Lotz.

"In the last two weeks the approvals have come through allowing us to construct an extra 260,000 tonnes of storage in Coonamble and 220,000 in Gilgandra."

*GrainCorp's Coonamble receival site will be the biggest in the state once these new bunkers are completed.

Mr Lotz says he expects the work to be completed well before the first grain trucks arrive at Coonamble on around the 15 October.

"These works are very familiar to us," he said.

"The hard part is the design and approval process. The works themselves will go very quickly, and the dozers and scrapers are already out there."

"Across our network we have construction alliances with trusted contractors who we know can do the work," Mr Lotz said.

With a substantial amount of grain still held on site from the harvest in 2020 that broke records at both Coonamble (440,000 tonnes) and Gilgandra (303,000 tonnes), work has been ongoing to upgrade existing storage as well as to create additional temporary storage bunkers.

"We've been looking at what flex the sites have available and making sure it will be a quicker turnaround at our bigger primary sites," Mr Lotz said.

"We have been taking post harvest receivals but we were basically full.

"We built temporary storage last year to squeeze it in so we've been improving last year's storage and building additional temporary storage. This is for those big flex years, those couple of years in a ten year cycle when we need to flex up."

Mr Lotz complimented both Coonamble and Gilgandra councils for their "positive approach" to ensuring their approvals for the construction were completed promptly.

"It's been great to see proactive councils committed to growing local infrastructure, and focused on looking after grower returns," he said.

Milton Ralston, hands-on Managing Director for Batterline Earthmoving, said the project is probably the biggest they've done for Graincorp and will significantly boost Gilgandra's capacity and make Coonamble the biggest receival site in the state.

"We normally do a lot of GrainCorp work, we go up to 1000 kilometers away doing jobs for them but this is the biggest we've done for them and it's in our local area so that's a bit of a win win," he said last week.

"We've got about 20 people involved on the different sites - from watering to compaction to carting the dirt in; we've got gravel trucks carting in all the gravel and a crusher crushing the gravel."

"This is our second week and we hope to take six to eight weeks all up."

He says that the benefits of having 700,000 tonnes of storage capacity at Coonamble should last year-round.

"Last harvest was a big motivator for this because there was a lot of carryover," he said.

"I think it's a good thing - it's going to be an eye opener for a lot of people to come and have a look at it as the biggest grain storage facility and for employment for people because they'll be here all year round."

• Milton Ralston (left) and Ian Rindfleish pause for a photo during construction work on new grain bunkers.

Mr Lotz also says that recent investment by both the state government and GrainCorp in rail infrastructure should also add up to smoother operation during harvest.

"We have great rail loading now at both Coonamble and Gilgandra, so we'll literally running trains all through harvest," he said.

"There's been a significant upgrade at Coonamble with the passing loop, our own siding and grain loading facility that means we can have one train waiting and one loading.

"At the former AWB site in Gilgandra there's a 900m siding, so we can completely lock away a full train.

"Its been a significant investment in above and below rail works, and it makes us very efficient," Mr Lotz said.