Construction of the Western Victoria Livestock Exchange (WVLX) at Mortlake is underway, with major earthworks started last week.
WVLX director Rohan Arnold said with the bulk earthworks started, the construction team had a “…very key first eight weeks” to keep to their “aggressive” target of opening by the January 2018 cattle weaner sales.
“We do need the weather conditions to be in our favour to achieve that target,” Mr Arnold said.
He conceded works had started about six weeks later than the team at SELX Operations P/L had initially hoped, but that was because they had “tweaked” the design to incorporate feedback from the 12 foundation agents.
After the bulk earthworks are complete, the project will then move to the construction of the central facilities building that will contain 12 offices for each of the foundation agents, a cafe and the WVLX administration office.
“We’ll then move onto the heart of the project, which is the undercover cattle yards,” Mr Arnold said.
He said the roofed yards would be a little less than 30,000 square metres.
“That’s about five MCGs, to put it in perspective.”
Mr Arnold said the yards would be in the largest half dozen in the country that were under a roof.
He said animal welfare was the primary priority in the saleyards’ design, so all livestock would be on soft floors and the team had used “common sense” in its layout that meant stock movements would be efficient including in drafting and weighing.
He said they’d designed the WVLX to comply with the highest occupational health and safety standards for people using the yards.
Mr Arnold said lowering the impact on animals during their yarding would reduce their stress and bring benefits to both vendors and buyers, which was important to the six board members of the SELX Operations, who were all producers.
He said after a few years of hard work in obtaining the development approvals from Moyne Shire Council and Environment Protection Authority Victoria (EPA), it was exciting to see works start at the site.
“The support of Moyne Shire Council has enabled us to progress in a timely manner,” Mr Arnold said.
He said backing from the foundation agents had given the company confidence to include almost $1 million in additional infrastructure from the original designs. These additions included doubling the capacity of the bull selling pens; upgrading half of unloading ramps; adding veterinarian crushes in drafts to enable pregnancy testing; and putting in a cow selling ring, primarily to serve dairy producers.
Mr Arnold said getting approvals from the local council and the EPA was helped by the team selecting a site that was not close to community infrastructure including housing, but near major roads (including the Hamilton Highway and the Hopkins Highway)making it an efficient location to move stock.
“We as an investment group saw there was a lot of talk but no action on a regional saleyards (in the area),” Mr Arnold said.
But ultimately, he said, the success of the site would be up to producers and whether they consigned cattle there.