Is Rocklea markets boss’ new $200,000 car lemon?

It looks pretty snazzy among the beat up Toyotas and Holdens down at the Rocklea Markets, but the CEO’s expensive new set of wheels has failed a consumer reliability test.

ALL the talk down among the bananas and bok choi at Rocklea is Brisbane Markets boss Andrew Young’s new Range Rover Sport (estimated price tag $200,000).

But we hope Young has roadside assistance for his new set of wheels with the Range Rover Sport named by Britain’s Sun newspaper as the country’s most unreliable car. A survey by Which? (the British equivalent of Choice) found that 42 per cent of Sport owners had taken their car to a mechanic in the last 12 months with problems ranging from the on-board computer to suspension issues. Apparently all the hi-tech extras were the main source of problems with built-in satnavs, dashboard displays and parking sensors all needing repair.

In the UK, the car is known as the “Chelsea Tractor” because fleets of them are seen running around one of London’s most exclusive suburbs. If Young suffers a motoring breakdown at the markets he can always hitch a ride in a passing forklift.

Brisbane Markets chief executive Andrew Young. Photo Ric Frearson

APPLES AND PEARS

STILL on Brisbane Markets and one wag attending the company’s annual general meeting earlier this week spotted the matching iPad Pros being used by directors. The wag noted that “usually non-executive directors pay for their own computers and whatnot. Strewth, a fully loaded iPad Pro can set you back $3000 these days. If Brisbane Markets is letting this mob loose in the Apple Store, it’s fair enough that questions be asked about how this outfit is being managed.” A Brisbane Markets spokesman tells your diarist that iPads are provided to directors if required and are up 2.5 years old. “This is a common practice among companies and followed a corporate governance review in 2016. It allows the efficient and secure distribution of board papers for a company with an asset value of about $400 million.”

HALF CENTURY BASH

THE guys and gals from Woollam Constructions will be kicking up their heels this weekend to celebrate managing director Craig Percival’s half century.

The 50th birthday bash is being held at Percival’s Rural View digs outside Mackay with a plane-load of business identities flying out to Mackay on Friday afternoon along with sporting mates including Norths Devils CEO Troy Rovelli - the former Sydney Roosters football manager who pried some big names to Bondi over many years.

You can take the building company boss out of Mackay, but you will never take the Mackay out of the boss. Percival divides his time between Woollam’s Brisbane and Mackay offices Thirty of his 50 years on the planet have been spent with Woollam, Queensland’s oldest privately-owned building company. He joined as a 20-year-old building cadet in March,1989 and was mentored by both Tom Woollam and his son Keith.

Woollam boss Craig Percival.

SCREAM FOR ICECREAM

A CITY Beat reader rang to lament the imminent closure of the Weis ice cream factory in Toowoomba and to tell us that his aunt made a precursor to the Weis bar from her corner store in Lowood, north of Ipswich, in the 1940s.

The reader says the aunt would get all the fruit she could not sell and the cream from a few cows she owned and mix it together in a metal tray before freezing it.

Large lines of people would gather outside the shop after race day in the small town for the icy treats. “She would give us some and if she didn’t give us more we would tea leaf them,” he recalls.

Weis founder Les Weis outside the Weis factory after Unilever purchased it in 2017

MARS A DAY

VICTORIA seems to be able to hang onto its regional manufacturing base better than Queensland. In the same week that Weis announced it was upping stumps and shifting to Sydney, Mars Wrigley Australia celebrated its 40th birthday in Ballarat. The Mars Ballarat factory produces treats such as Maltesers, M&Ms, Pods, and Mars Bars for Australia and beyond. This year, the factory will produce enough Maltesers, M&M’s and Pods to go from Brisbane to Los Angeles and back nearly a dozen times.