Son of scrap metal tycoon takes on his father

A Queensland business tycoon has suddenly found himself scrapping with a new competitor - his son who is building $50m “recycling park” southwest of the Ipswich CBD.

Legendary Queensland scrap metal merchant Ron Wanless has been busy with his calculator and reckons he has passed an extraordinary recycling milestone.

His firm Action Metals processed his 10 millionth tonne of metal, about the same time he turned 80.

Wanless, who still plays polo and used to be a trotting driver, started in metals as a 17-year-old panel beater.

His firm now has 10 sites in Queensland, and sends shiploads of scrap metal in 20,000-tonne loads to Asia where it is melted down to make new metals.

Scrap metal tycoon Ron Wanless, 80, and his son Dean Wanless, 51, who is seeking to build a $50 million recycling plant in Ipswich. Picture: Des Houghton

In recent years, the firm has been shipping 700,000 tonnes of scrap a year to Indonesia.

Car bodies, white goods, roofing iron and old machines are all given a new life.

Now Ron Wanless is about to be upstaged – and he could not be prouder.

His 51-year-old son Dean, an Ipswich Grammar old boy who studied accountancy and law at QUT, is seeking state and council approval to build a $50m “recycling park” bearing the family name on a 600ha site at Ebenezer, 12km southwest of the Ipswich CBD.

Just do not call it a dump.

Dean Wanless prefers to call it a resource recovery, recycling and landfill project.

The proposal is so grand it could go a long way to easing South-east Queensland’s waste disposal crisis.

But Wanless says he is fighting a misinformation campaign from rival waste operators who are stirring up public sentiment and funding brochures questioning the project.

“There is no doubt we are fighting a communications battle in our attempts to inform the people of Ipswich about our mission,” he said.

An abandoned mine site at Ebenezer in Ipswich here a $50m waste recycling plant is proposed. Picture: Des Houghton

“We are not here to create another landfill. This will be a major recycling hub.”

But landfill there is. And a lot of it. There is a massive trench that stretches for 1km on a defunct coal mine that closed in 2003.

Ipswich has become the repository for much of the state’s waste.

I can understand why the historic city is sceptical about using redundant open-cut mine voids for landfill.

It is a mining and industrial wasteland, so what else could a site like this be used for?

Wanless the younger says that within two or three years he would recycle 50 per cent of all waste delivered to the site.

He has walked the talk. He owns and operates a major recycling plant at Kemps Creek in Sydney that successfully recycles 80 per cent of all waste delivered to his door.

It is a target he will aspire to at Ebenezer.

Wanless said Ipswich Mayor Teresa Harding hit the nail on the head when she said recently on this page that she wanted to harness the avalanche of waste and position Ipswich as the nation’s leading recycling centre.

Wanless says his project aims to do just that with 27,000sq m of shed space housing eight separate processing stations for different types of waste. It would allow him to recycle between 5-10 tonnes of waste an hour, 24 hours a day.

His competitors in Ipswich offered only “rudimentary” recycling, he said.

Wanless said his plant would accept commercial, retail and industrial waste including metals, glass, rubber, plastic, timber, cardboard and especially building materials.

Timber can be turned into a sawdust-based fertiliser, glass can be turned into building products, cardboard can be recycled seven times and metal can be melted down.

He may even sell metals to his father (pictured together above), “if the price is right”.

“Waste has to be seen as a resource,” Wanless said.

“We want to flip this thing on its head to provide a service – and help the environment.”

Wanless believes his park will ultimately attract subsidiary recycling firms using the waste to create environmentally friendly products while creating “thousands” of jobs.

He is trying to get brownie points with environment regulators by preserving a 32ha koala habitat on the property.

There he wants to plant more gum trees and fund a koala hospital to be run by the World Wildlife Fund and koala rescue groups.

Meanwhile, scientists at QUT have started monitoring water and will help plan sustainable strategies for the site.

Wanless is working with his old university to establish a Centre for a Waste-Free World and has offered the old mining company HQ for an Ebenezer campus.

Des Houghton is a media consultant and former editor of The Courier-Mail, the Sunday Mail and the Sunday Sun.