Speaking on behalf of the Australian investment company, AAMI Investment Group’s head of construction, Andrew McCarron, announced the decision to local media, Inverell Mayor Paul Harmon and Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall, on Friday. 

“Palisade have six RLXs in the eastern states,” Mr McCarron said. “They acquired ‘Inverell’ in mid 2012 and always had intentions to redevelop.” 

“The core part of redevelopment will be demolishing the existing selling pen areas,” he said. 

Those stalls will be replaced with modular selling pens that can be altered to fit the size of the cattle lot being sold. The selling area will be covered by a large roof, and soft floors, which help animals settle more quickly and make them easier to handle, will be installed using a wood chip/saw dust blend. 

Mr McCarron said creating a covered, soft floor area was “not only an animal welfare issue, it also comes back to a meat quality issue” as cattle left standing on hot concrete and exposed to the sun tend to lose condition which affects meat quality.  

“Cattle that stand under cover on a soft floor generally have what they call less shrink,” he said. “They weigh better and at the end of the day, the seller takes home more in their pocket and that’s really fundamental but important. [The cattle] may sell for the same price per kilo but they weigh heavier.”

Mr Carron explained the company will also build “some additional holding yards” and install “some big tanks” to harvest the water off the new roof. 

“We [also] want to put in some agent offices on the back of the current admin facilities … and that’s so that agents, not only those six companies that operate here but those other agents on the eastern side [and] on the western side, who want to operate here, they can take up an office on the day when there’s a sale event occurring,” he said.

While noting that the redevelopment plans are currently subject to approval by Inverell Shire Council, Mr McCarron said they were optimistic about receiving “favourable outcome” and if so, construction would start in March 2018. 

The redevelopment is expected to take around nine months to complete using a staged building process so the yards can still be used through-out the construction period. 

“This is going to be more attractive to those that want to buy here and more attractive to those that want to sell here,” he said. 

Friday’s announcement of a $5 million upgrade to the Inverell Regional Livestock Exchange by the Palisade Investment Partners, who own the sale yards, was accompanied by a pitch to Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall to consider making a state government contribution to take the redevelopment further.

Speaking on behalf of the Australian investment company, Andrew McCarron, said the owners were hoping to secure government support for potential developments beyond improved selling yards and the addition of more agent offices.

For an additional $1.5 to $2 million in state funding, those extra developments would include a road train truck [drive-through] wash; an expansion of the hard stand area for trucks to park and break up their trailers; an amenity block for drivers connected to the truck wash; and extended roofing over more of the stock yards beyond what the company can already “commit too”.

Mr Carron said Inverell’s sale yards are “geographically perfectly placed” in northern NSW not only because they are within a cattle grazing region but because of the enterprises and industry that exist in the region.  

“It’s well known for its cattle enterprises, its feedlot enterprises, it’s abattoir enterprises, it’s well positioned,” he said.  

Mr Carron explained the combined private and government investment would be going into essential infrastructure - “sale yards are the backbone to the industry” – on a project set to deliver outcomes over a 20 to 30 year period.

Speaking after the presentation, Mr Marshall described the project as “very exciting” and one which has “on the surface” the potential to increase the yarding in Inverell and provide “a huge economic boost in the community”.

“Obviously the company is in the early stages and [they] still have a bit of work to do to develop their plans and their business case,” he said. “[But] I’m sure we’ll continue to have some pretty positive discussions and I look forward to it.”