Construction of the Western Victoria Livestock Exchange (WVLX) at Mortlake is underway, with major earthworks in progress.
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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 said works had started about six weeks later than initially hoped because the saleyards’ design had been “tweaked” to incorporate feedback from the 12 foundation stock 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 cover nearly 30,000 square metres.
“That’s about five MCGs, to put it in perspective,” Mr Arnold said.
Mr Arnold said the new yards would be among the largest half dozen in Australia that were roofed.
He said animal welfare was the primary priority with the saleyards’ design, so all livestock would be on soft floors. The layout of the yards had used “common sense” to make stock movements efficient, including in drafting and weighing, Mr Arnold said.
The design also complied 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.
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.
He said the company had included almost $1 million in additional infrastructure from the original designs. The 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 his group had decided to build a saleyards at Mortlake because “there was a lot of talk but no action on a regional saleyards (in the area).”
But he said the success of the saleyards would be up to producers and whether they consigned cattle there.