{"id":172492,"date":"2017-03-15T22:26:01","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T12:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=172492"},"modified":"2020-07-22T09:44:47","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T23:44:47","slug":"full-steam-ahead-at-swickers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2017\/03\/15\/full-steam-ahead-at-swickers\/","title":{"rendered":"Full Steam Ahead At Swickers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Sunpork Group CEO Dr Robert van Barneveld on site at Swickers on Friday\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

March 16, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Swickers complex in Kingaroy – the site of a massive fire late last year – is being transformed with three new buildings rapidly taking shape.<\/p>\n

The fire on November 6 destroyed the company’s boning room, chillers and export distribution centre.<\/p>\n

The boning room workers were relocated within days to another facility at Wulkuraka, near Ipswich, and a temporary accommodation village was built nearby for them to live in during weekdays.<\/p>\n

Sunpork Group CEO Dr Robert van Barneveld told southburnett.com.au<\/strong> last week the priority now was to bring everyone back home as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

For this reason, a temporary boning room is being built at the Kingaroy complex as an extension to the existing wholesale chiller building.<\/p>\n

This building – like the killing floor and offices – was not damaged in the fire.<\/p>\n

A new, permanent freezer and chilling building, which will work in conjunction with the temporary boning room, is being built a short distance away.<\/p>\n

Mr van Barneveld said this freezer building was expected to be completed by the end of April.<\/p>\n

“When both are finished, we expect to get everybody back (from Ipswich) during the first week in May,” he said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It has been a big ask to get people to live (away from home) every week.”<\/p>\n

The Ipswich operation has also been costing Swickers money and co-ordination headaches with chiller trucks carrying product running constantly between the two sites.<\/p>\n

The third part of the building project in Kingaroy is the reconstruction of the building that was destroyed by fire.<\/p>\n

This site was thoroughly cleared of debris in February, and construction has now started on a new boning room, 10 chillers and a distribution centre on the same footprint as the razed building.<\/p>\n

A tunnel will also be built to link this building and the new freezer building.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This will pass under the current main entrance road, which means the entrance will probably be re-located a short way up Kingaroy-Barkers Creek Road.<\/p>\n

“We will then again be able to freeze offal for export. The offal market in Asia is a premium market for us,” Mr van Barneveld said.<\/p>\n

Since the fire, offal has been going to render, ie. turned into lower-value by-products.<\/p>\n

Mr van Barneveld said the plan was to have the new boning room building completed by the end of May.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All the work is being done at fast as possible, aided by the slashing of red tape by various authorities, but he said all the building work was top class.<\/p>\n

“It will be a good quality building which will last us for 20 or 30 years,” he said.<\/p>\n

“However, we made a commitment to the region to get back to business as soon as possible and we’re doing that.”<\/p>\n

Local contractors were being used on the three building sites wherever possible.<\/p>\n

Mr van Barneveld said that since the fire Swickers had maintained its full complement of 580 employees, and the kill rate was more than 17,500 pigs a week, “not far off where we were before”.<\/p>\n

Related articles:<\/strong><\/p>\n