CSF Industries builds Groote Eylandt replacement wharf in Cairns

A Far North business has embarked on a huge task to build a new wharf which will be shipped to the Northern Territory to replace a jetty destroyed by a Cyclone Megan bulk carrier incident.

Managing director of CSF Industries Sean Adams. Photo: Catherine Duffy.

A Far North business has embarked on a huge task to build a new wharf which will be shipped to the Northern Territory to replace a jetty destroyed by a Cyclone Megan bulk carrier incident.

Cairns-based steel fabrication company CSF Industries will transport a 60m long wharf to Groote Eylandt to replace crucial infrastructure which was damaged during Tropical Cyclone Megan last year.

CSF Industries managing director Sean Adams said it was the most logistically challenging project the business had undertaken.

“We’ve undertaken bigger in monetary value and overall size, but in terms of one complete fabricated section, we’ve never transported a 100t, 60m long item before, so it’s definitely the largest piece we’ve fabricated and sent out,” Mr Adams said.

Managing director of CSF Industries Sean Adams. Picture: Catherine Duffy.

He said the project, which employed around 100 tradespeople demonstrated the manufacturing capabilities the region had to offer.

“We are a manufacturing town as well as a tourism town so for me it demonstrates what we can do as a community,” he said.

“On site here, (we’ve) got 30 people working and we’d be going 24 hours, seven days a week since the start of January, on site, so it hasn’t stopped for the last two and a half, three months.”

He said the project employed tradespeople from various industries, in what he deemed a major boost for the region.

“We’ve got about six different companies working here, as in contract welders, scaffolders, external painters, machinists, transport companies, crane hire companies so it’s been a huge coup for the region,” he said.

“But I think it really just demonstrates what we can achieve with the right facilities and the right mindsets.”

The first part of the wharf was sent on Thursday morning with the second part to arrive in a week’s time.

“(Around) 7.30am (on Thursday) it sails up to Groote where they’ll unload that first one then come back and we’ve still got another piece to join onto this section,” he said.

“In a week and a half’s time, we’ll have the second one and send that one up.”

Tropical Cyclone Megan crossed the southwestern Gulf of Carpentaria coast of the Northern Territory on March 18 as a Category 2 system.

Two days prior, on March 16, the tropical low, which later intensified into ex-Cyclone Megan, caused significant damage to vegetation and damaged the wharf as a manganese bulk carrier was pushed against it.

Originally published as CSF Industries builds Groote Eylandt replacement wharf in Cairns