TWO prominent companies with extensive interests in Goulburn are pooling their resources to provide rail freight handling facilities in the city.
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One of the players is CF Rail Services which offers its national rail clients locomotive and rollingstock leasing support along with heavy repair facilities at its South Goulburn base.
The other is Qube Logistics Rail Services, part of a diversified and prominent stevedoring conglomerate operating out of Port Botany.
Qube Logistics Rail Services has been running bulk and containerised grain together with a diverse array of intermodal trains through Goulburn for several years, having already based a large number of drivers in the city.
The bulk of its rollingstock and locomotive inspections are carried out at CF Rail Services’ Goulburn workshops.
Workshops general manager and architect of the new freight handling initiative, Mick Cooper, says the plan will initially see 1500 tonnes of logs leave Goulburn for China, weekly.
The logs, brought by road from forests in the Braidwood region, will have already been cut into lengths suitable for containerisation.
The product will arrive at a special compound on the extreme eastern side of the CF Rail Services property (adjacent to existing industrial land) where they will be subjected to pest control to suit China’s requirements.
Some 35 to 40 tonnes of timber product will then be loaded into 40ft containers and placed on rail vehicles and quietly leave for Botany when a full trainload has been assembled.
Two reach stackers and pest control specialists will be joining log processors to provide new employment opportunities in Goulburn. In addition, the traffic will strengthen employment for CF Rail Services’ maintenance staff and local Qube train crews.
Mr Cooper says the initiative opens the potential for many other Goulburn and regional businesses to take advantage of a seamless rail freight transport process through to Port Botany be they meat processors, wool merchants, scrap metal firms or grain producers.
“In fact we have already discussed the concept with several potential bulk rail users.” he said.
Extensive consultations have been underway all this year between CF Rail Services, Goulburn Mulwaree Council, the Australian Rail Track Corporation and the Federal Member for Hume Angus Taylor in the effort to bring the initiative to fruition.
This has included an extensive number of on-site meetings between all players and Mr Cooper says the aim is to firmly put rail back into Goulburn.
Q & A tomorrow
THE Goulburn Chamber of Commerce is enthusiastically supporting the intermodal project.
So much so it has invited Mr Cooper to detail his intermodal project to the Chamber’s Awesome Goulburn general meeting to be held at the Goulburn Soldiers Club tomorrow at 5.30pm.
With the proposal soon to go before Goulburn Mulwaree Council, the Chamber president Prue Martin said “Our Chamber recognises the benefits and opportunities such a development would provide”.
We believe the project will result in jobs for both CF Rail Services and local businesses able to expand due to this facility.
- Prue Martin, Chamber of Commerce President
“We are constantly looking for and assisting projects that will potentially boost our local economy (and) such a facility will attract potential business and create opportunities for local businesses in terms of freight and exporting and importing,” she said.
“We believe the project will result in jobs for both CF Rail Services and local businesses able to expand due to this facility.”
The Chamber says any business person that might benefit from the intermodal project should feel free to attend tomorrow’s meeting which will include a question and answer segment.
For more information contact Mick Cooper at CF Rail Services Goulburn on 0428 040 241