Move over equestrian centre, Towers saleyards expansion on the cards

Charters Towers Regional Council is in the process of finalising the Dalrymple Saleyards Masterplan that will help guide future investment at the Dalrymple Saleyards.

One recommendation made in the masterplan was to potentially relocate the neighbouring equestrian centre to make way for an expansion of the saleyards.

Charters Towers Regional Council mayor Liz Schmidt said the masterplan overarched all aspects associated with the Dalrymple Saleyards including its potential expansion.

"It is a huge overview and masterplan overarching everything, from domestic sales, export and the facility around the equestrian centre," Cr Schmidt said.

"We have to decide firstly what is reasonable in an economic perspective and what to do with the saleyards, all of that will come into discussion around the masterplan."

Cr Schmidt said if an expansion was decided, consultation with equestrian centre users would be ongoing.

"If the expansion does eventuate, it would be quite some time down the track," she said.

"But there would be consultation with the users. It is not used a lot. I think they have five events there a year and some smaller ones, but the interaction with the users of the facility would come into account.

"There are a couple of options of what relocating the equestrian centre could look like, certainly it wouldn't be moving far. My understanding is if it is moved, it is moved strategically close to where it is now.

"But again it hasn't been determined, because it is a working document."

Cr Schmidt said the Dalrymple Saleyards Masterplan was in the final stages of development before it would be tabled at council.

"It will come to council and we will see what that looks like. We are working with all stakeholders, grazing community, transport, exporters; we will work in negotiating with them what is the best bang for our buck and what we do with the saleyards.

"We have a long standing history with domestic sales and our saleyards are the biggest in the north, so we are working around what that looks like moving forward and making sure we are taking care of our domestic sales.

"Potentially the live export may change... or if there are facilities established closer to Townsville, we have to take all those things into account and make sure we look after our core, which is local graziers and domestic saleyard community... and potentially expand into something that could be a state of the art facility."

The Dalrymple Saleyard Masterplan will be available for community consultation, allowing all stakeholders and users of the facility to have a say.