Scrap king in court fight over $50m Ipswich recycling centre

A well-known scrap merchant is lawyering up for a big fight against Ipswich City Council over his plans for a $50m recycling park on the site of a former coal mine.

Dean Wanless says the Ipswich recycling park will create hundreds of jobs.

Recycling king Dean Wanless is lawyering up for a big fight against Ipswich City Council over his plans for a $50m recycling park.

The council threw a spanner in the works of Wanless’ plan last month when it rejected allowing him to using the site of an old coal mine site at Ebenezer for landfill as part of the project. Wanlesss, the son of legendary Queensland scrap metal merchant Ron Wanless, says only 20 per cent of the waste going through the centre will end up in landfill.

Wanless has now lodged an appeal with the Planning and Environment Court, telling City Beat that he fears he has been caught up in a political battle in Ipswich over the landfill issue.

“The council failed to understand that the park is an integrated development which led to errors in their evaluation of the proposal,” says Wanless.

Wanless said at capacity the facility will recycle more than 800,000 tonnes of waste a year that is currently going to landfill in Ipswich.

Wanless’ recycling depot in Brisbane

About 300 jobs are expected to be created during the construction of the centre west of Ipswich that Wanless predicts could become a recycling ‘Silicon Valley.’ About 100 workers would work at the site once completed.

Wanless, the chief executive of the family-owned Wanless Waste Management, says the facility would be based on the company’s existing Sydney recycling park that currently recycled half a million tonnes of waste each year.

The company has held a series of community information sessions to explain the project but the council, with the exception of veteran councillor Paul Tully, is not supportive.

Wanless says the park, which could handle about 4 per cent of Queensland’s recyclable waste, could be delayed several years because of the court battle. Comment has been sought from Ipswich City Council.

BATTLE OF THE BANDS

The top end of town are preparing to plug in their amps and hit the skins for the fifth annual Brisband competition next month.

The musical battle at the Triffid on November 6 will feature bands from Deloitte, VideoPro, EY, KPMG, Rio Tinto and PwC with all proceeds raised to help preterm babies and their families via the Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Deloitte partner and Triffid part owner John Greig says that along with great live music there also will be silent auction items, raffle prizes and collectable Brisband merchandise on sale. Greig says that as a father of a pre-term son, albeit 28 years ago, he knows first-hand the difference that early medical intervention makes to these bubs in later years.

John Greig

City Beat readers will recall that Greig, who boasts more than 30 years’ experience in corporate restructuring and insolvency, has had a busy few years, most notably helping hammer out a rescue plan for Virgin, whose founder Sir Richard Branson by coincidence got his first big break in business when he started Virgin Records in the 1970s. Tickets are available from Moshtix

GAME ON

Is it too early to assess how we are going with our 2032 Olympics planning? Not according to the Property Council of Australia, which is planning a lunchtime soiree on Friday to discuss preparations three months to the day since Brisbane woke up as an Olympic city.

The lunch will feature Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner, Urbis director James Tuma and Buildcorp co-founder Josephine Sukkar.

With the clock now ticking towards 2032, conversations are well underway about how business and government can work together to deliver the international event.

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