Plan for new live export facility near Townsville

Ron Dixon, Woodstock Pastoral Services Pty Ltd, Lansdown Station, has put a development application into Townsville City Council for the facility, which would include a short term feedlot.

Mr Dixon, who has worked as a contractor for a number of live export companies, said this was a project he had been interested in for a long time and now he just had to wait for the council's decision.

"The live export industry has been through some pretty hard times but my feeling is that especially in Townsville, it's on the way forward and the industry is pretty strong," he said.

The facility would be located on Lansdown Station on Calcium Road, about 7km south of Woodstock, and would include internal roads, office and workshop amenities, waste management facilities, water storage infrastructure and holding pens for livestock prior to export.

The yard would have an average holding period of two to eight days before cattle are loaded are transported to the Port of Townsville to be loaded onto live export vessels.

Under the proposal it would be developed in four stages, with the first stage to have a capacity of 5000 standard cattle units and an annual average throughput of about 50,000 SCU.

At maximum capacity, the facility would be limited to 150,000 SCU throughput a year due to shipping restrictions at the Port of Townsville.

The feedlot, which would have a 500 SCU capacity, would allow animals not able to be exported to be held in the yard on feed until they can be placed on the next available shipment, returned to the owner or passed to another property.

It is estimated that the site could employ up to 10 staff on a daily basis.

The development application noted that the facility would bring would result in local employment and expenditure in the Calcium region as well as added economic benefits to the port.

Public submissions on the project are now open until December 19.

A Townsville City Council spokesman said after that process, submissions would be assessed.

"It will then go to the next available council meeting, keeping in mind that with it being an election year there will only be one council meeting in January before the council goes into caretaker mode," he said.