THE busy Naracoorte Regional Livestock Exchange (NRLE) in the heart of south-east South Australia will continue with plans for a major overhaul.
Naracoorte Lucindale District Council, as owner-operator of the site, has planned a $5.1 million redevelopment of the livestock sales complex which includes roofing its concrete cattle-holding areas and instaling soft-floor materials.
The upgrade will be completed in two stages with the first phase involving the construction of a new waste water treatment plant and replumbing of a water trough system to ease waste water management pressures imposed by tighter Environment Protection Authority controls.
This part of the upgrade must be completed by June 2012 to meet the terms of $1.85m grant secured through the National Water Security Plan for Cities and Towns initiative.
The roof, which will cover its 162 selling pens and hard-floor cattle handling areas, will play a big part in eliminating much of its effluent disposal problems. Mount Gambier company Spanlift has been chosen to build the roof, while SA wastewater management company Factor UTB will build the waste water treatment facility.
Stage two of the upgrade will see a new cattle weighbridge plus four new angled two-deck cattle loading races along with the replacement of internal panelling in the selling-pen area with swing gates to ease the installation and removal of wood chips.
The decision by council to continue with the upgrade works follows a rejection of a proposal by Regional Infra-structure and Palisade Invest-ments to lease the facility.
“The offer and terms of this lease proposal did not meet our expectations,” Naracoorte Lucindale mayor Erika Vickery told a town hall meeting earlier this month.
Council signed off on the multi-million-dollar upgrade works last week.
The stage-one portion of the upgrade has a planned start date early next year. Stage two, which remains un-costed at this point, should be completed by 2014.
The installation and periodic removal of the woodchip material will come at virtually no ongoing cost to the saleyards as a local organic farmer has offered to provide clean fresh chips from his south-east property and remove the soiled chips for recycling through his organic enterprise.
Mr James said an increase in cattle sold at Naracoorte this year had seen annual throughput for 2010-11 climb to 118,873 head, which is 23,200 above its 10-year average. The increased popularity in the region’s district weaner sales had seen about 20,000 beef weaners and 3000 breeding females sold annually in recent years, which had helped to drive up throughput, he said.
Naracoorte stock agents are pleased about the outcome.
Naracoorte Combined Agents Association chairman Bruce Redpath said agents were looking forward to working with a new management to ensure the success of the Naracoorte saleyards going forward.
“We’re pleased council has made this decision because it means that the assets will remain with the town for the benefit of the community,” he said. “The schedule improvements will happen over a period of time and we will know that it will get done.”
Full coverage of Naracoorte weaner sales over the coming weeks in Stock & Land. 
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