No more July for AgGrow

Managing director Geoff Dein said the AgGrow dates were moving forward to coincide with the end of the financial year. 

“We’re doing it June 28, 29 and 30 next year, and (AgGrow) is going pre-June 30 from now on,” he said. 

Next year will see the last day on June 30, and each year following will move back a day for seven years until the final day will be June 23. Then, Mr Dein said it will move back to June 30 and continue in that cycle. 

”We’re expecting some very strong response from that,” he said.

“It’s accountancy driven; basically I took the choice to move now because there was another field day later in June and they moved a bit earlier, so I thought I’d take the lead.

“I want to move quickly and dominate the end of June so that the exhibitors can count on a good spend from the Central Highlands for the end of the financial year.”

The date change is not the only one in the mixing pot for Mr Dein, who said he is increasing his focus on utilising the bull selling infrastructure at the grounds.

“We’ve got a lot of spring bull sales, and we just booked someone new in for a February sale,” he said.

“We’ll be going from the last day of August through until February, so we’ve become more focused on stud cattle and stud bull sales as we use the multi-purpose selling facilities.”

The new Woolshed Bar is also proving popular, with weddings, meetings, birthdays and plenty of other social events held at the site. 

The bar was one of Mr Dein’s own plans, and it took five yeas to come about. 

Next in the pipeline is the “less exciting stuff”, he said. 

“Next year it will be infrastructure for the stud bulls but also toilet facilities, we’ve got to address those fairly smartly,” he said. “People expect more and more, and we need to deliver that.” 

Mr Dein said he hoped to see strong support for the date change in the coming years.