Horizon Commodities Pty Ltd

A Dalby grain business built around trading, drying, storage and practical site services

Horizon Commodities is a Dalby-based grain business that combines grain trading with physical site services including drying, storage, custom grading, fumigation, hammer milling, freight coordination and a public weighbridge. Its own website title frames it as “Dalby Grain Storage and Drying”, and the service mix published on the site shows that this is more than a simple buy-and-sell grain desk. It is a working grain facility designed to help move grain from paddock or purchase point into saleable, storable and transport-ready form.

The business says it was established in 2013 when Pengelly Farming Pty Ltd and Aaron Jones pursued an opportunity to create an independent, transparent and grower-focused trading company. That origin story matters because it explains the feel of the business: Horizon Commodities appears to sit close to the grower and close to the grain itself, with commercial trading supported by hands-on post-harvest capability at its Dalby site.

How the business has developed

According to Horizon Commodities’ own history page, the business operated for six years from a Drayton Street office before moving to 62 Black Street, Dalby, in 2019. It says the move to Black Street allowed it not only to continue grain trading, but also to weigh, dry, store, fumigate and transport grain. In 2021, the company says it expanded the site further with a new unloading facility and several new silos. Those details are especially useful because they show a business that has evolved from a more office-based trading model into a more complete physical grain operation.

That growth gives Horizon Commodities a stronger position in the grain supply chain than a trader with no site infrastructure. A business that can buy grain, assess it, dry it, clean it, store it and help organise freight can be highly useful in seasons where moisture, quality or logistics bottlenecks affect marketability. Publicly available information suggests Horizon has built exactly that kind of practical service model in Dalby.

Commodity focus and what it appears to handle

Horizon Commodities says it specialises in wheat, barley and sorghum, while also saying it will buy and sell most grains offered. Its product pages specifically reference wheat grades from APH1 through to FED1 under Grain Trade Australia specifications, barley grades from Barley 1 to Barley 3 under GTA specifications, and Sorghum 1 and Sorghum 2. That puts the business squarely in the mainstream eastern-Australian grain market rather than in a narrow niche.

The Dalby location makes that commodity focus especially logical. Western Downs Regional Council says the region is one of Queensland’s largest producers of sorghum, wheat, oats, barley and mung beans, while Business Queensland lists wheat, barley, sorghum, maize, chickpea, faba bean, soybean, mungbean, sunflower and canola among the state’s field crops. In that context, Horizon Commodities’ published emphasis on wheat, barley and sorghum lines up neatly with the crop base of the local district. It is a grounded inference that the business is particularly relevant to growers and grain users working in the Darling Downs and wider Western Downs production belt.

Why the Dalby site matters

Dalby is not just a regional office location; it is a meaningful grain town in one of Queensland’s key cropping districts. The Western Downs economy is heavily tied to agriculture, and the local crop profile supports both grain production and intensive livestock sectors that depend on grain and feed movement. A site like Horizon Commodities can therefore matter in several ways at once: it can help grain find a market, help grain meet quality or moisture requirements, and help grain move into storage, feed or trading pathways.

Horizon’s own service list reinforces that point. The company offers segregated short- and long-term storage, grain drying using dual 25-tonne Leahy batch dryers and a 28-tonne-per-hour IBEC 1600 continuous-flow dryer, custom grading through a Kwik-Kleen grain cleaner, fumigation services to manage live insects, and hammer milling for barley, wheat and sorghum at up to 10 tonnes per hour. Taken together, that reads like a practical grain-conditioning and handling site that can serve growers, traders, feed users and others needing grain prepared for sale or use.

Trading, logistics and service capability

The commercial side of the business is still central. Horizon Commodities says it buys and sells grain, and its freight-and-logistics page states that it can handle the freight and logistics for grain purchased and sold through the business. The team page names Aaron Jones as CEO, Director and Grain Trader, Brendan Buckley as Logistics Officer, and Chris Westaway as Transport Fleet Manager, which suggests a business with dedicated in-house focus on both commercial grain movement and site execution.

That combination is important in practice. Many grain businesses either trade grain without much site capability, or run site services without being especially active in merchandising. Horizon Commodities appears to bridge those roles. For growers, that can mean access to a local buyer with drying, grading and storage options. For feed or grain users, it can mean access to grain that has been conditioned to suit a requirement. For transport-linked customers, it means the business can help coordinate the freight side as well.

Practical utility beyond trading

One feature that makes Horizon Commodities particularly useful at a local level is its public weighbridge. The company says the weighbridge consists of two combined bridges with a total wheel-spread span of 34.6 metres, allowing total weights, individual trailers and axle weights to be measured. It also says the weighbridge welcomes not only trucks but caravans, stock crates and scrap-steel loads, and lists operating hours as 7am to 5pm Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays. That gives the business a broader practical role in the district beyond grain merchandising alone.

Overall, Horizon Commodities comes across as a modern local grain business with a strong Western Downs fit: independent in origin, grower-facing in tone, and more operationally complete than a simple trading office. It is most strongly associated with wheat, barley and sorghum, but its broader service platform suggests value for a wider range of grain-handling, conditioning and logistics needs in and around Dalby.