Farmers fear the closure of Warrnambool saleyards as council decision looms

Councillors and officers met with saleyards interest groups last week, but Mr Eykels said it left farmers feeling the council was just "going through the motions" and was going to shut it.

He said he still didn't know why the council allocated $5.6 million in its budget only to find just months later the future of the saleyards was up in the air.

"I asked them at the meetings: 'What do you know now that you didn't know then?'," he said.

Mr Eykels said he was still waiting for an answer.

The council had signalled in May its intention to invest in the saleyards, but in August councillors voted not to award the tender for the works which effectively put the future of the facility in doubt.

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Councillors are set to vote on the saleyards at the November council meeting.

Cr Ben Blain said the focus groups were done in order to hear the concerns of the community and there had been no decision made on the future of the yards.

He said more information would be going out as more reports came in to the council.

"We'll be getting them out to the community so everyone has the same information in order to be fully informed when it comes to the November meeting," Cr Blain said.

Mr Eykels said referring to the investment in the saleyards as "ratepayer's money" gave the community the wrong impression.

He said farmers paid a fee to use the saleyards, so the council should have kept it upgraded.

"It's always run at a profit. It's never run at a loss," he said.

Mr Eykels said he was concerned depreciation was being used to justify closing the yards.

"Depreciation is a paper figure. It's a tax figure, it's not an actual figure," he said.

Mr Eykels, who has been going to the yards since the early 1980s and is a commissioned buyer who worked across the region, said the closure of the yards would financially impact him.

He said when the concrete walkway collapsed in 2020 it wasn't "like an earthquake".

"It was just a cracking sound but we all kept on working," he said.

J & J Kelly Livestock Agents' Jess Kelly said if the council had reinvested in the saleyards "we wouldn't be in this situation currently".

She said closing the yards would be a huge loss of income for so many people.

"The ripple effect will be huge," she said.

Mr Eykels also rejected claims by the manager of Mortlake saleyards Colin Ryan in August that throughput at the Warrnambool saleyard had dropped by 87 per cent since 2016.

"That's just not right," he said.

The Warrnambool saleyard had yarded 97,865 cattle in 2016 and 63,803 in 2022, Mr Eykels said, which was only about 34 per cent not 87 per cent.

Mr Ryan declined to comment.