‘Massive’ 35 per cent price rise on piping forces dairy farmers to shelve work
Farm jobs are being shelved and suppliers are struggling to receive manufacturer quotes, as PVC and poly-pipe has jumped between 35-60 per cent.
South Australian Dairyfarmers Association president Robert Brokenshire will soon install 2-3km of poly-pipe for drought management to use reticulated water and install more troughs.
He said his supplier will have a 35 per cent price increase from May this year on PVC and poly-pipe, which are used for water supply to troughs and dairies, and irrigation.
“It’s a massive increase, we’re seeing it everywhere now on the dairy farm,” he said. “Anything and everything we’re doing either has a fuel surcharge for delivery or it’s got a price rise.”
He said he had received letters with price rise notifications for May across several necessary farm products.
“Ultimately this inflation will be larger than the Covid inflation, and we’re still all paying for that,” he said.
“Any plastic products obviously are going up because of the price of oil, the base product of all plastic is oil.”
Seattle Services manager Jeremy Lambert is a self-described “middle man” between pipe manufacturers and farmers. He said manufacturer quotes had risen by up to 60 per cent for piping.
“A job that was going to cost $10,000 is now over $16,000,” he said.
“Normally we get up to two to three different prices on a project, now we have one supplier who will give us a price … And the price is horrendous.”
He said pipe was traditionally a low-margin commodity, but it was heavily tied to the oil price. Mr Lambert said projects typically took three to four months to organise and install, and irrigation projects would likely be delayed with ongoing price rises and slowed supply availability.
For Swan Marsh dairy farmer Jason Smith, he has delayed installing seven new troughs on his southwest Victorian dairy farm, which needs a “substantial amount” of poly-pipe.
He said the poly-pipe cost at his local reseller had risen 36 per cent “basically overnight”.
“We were going to do some more crop work and poly-pipe has gone up substantially, we put that off because of that,” he said.
“With me putting off my job and another farmer putting off theirs, it’s adversely affecting the jobs in town.”
Meanwhile, Dairy Australia hosted a fuel and fertiliser webinar on Monday for farmers dealing with price rises and supply shortages.
“We have heard anecdotally that prices are rising given global fuel shortages are having flow-on price impacts on petroleum/oil derived products including plastics such as PVC,” a Dairy Australia spokesperson said.