Business
5 February, 2025
Council considers selling loss-making batch plant
The Mount Isa City Council batch plant has been losing money over the last four years.
Originally built to provide much-needed local competition in the construction industry, Mount Isa City Council’s batch plant could soon be sold off.
Elected councillors last week voted to call for expressions of interest for the disposal of the land, concrete batch plant and equipment.
Interested parties could either take over the current site or buy the equipment and move it elsewhere.
“The batch plant itself has two functions: one is the supply of ready-mix concrete and the second is landscaping supplies of soil and gravel with all products being sourced from local suppliers,” said the report to councillors.
“Both of these functions provide material to external and internal customers.”
The council, concerned by the rising losses by the batch plant, commissioned an advisory firm to take a closer look at the operations.
“Over a number of years, especially the last four years, the batch plant and the sales of gravel and soils to the commercial and community sector has generated substantial losses to council,” last week’s report to councillors read.
“Contributing to these losses as identified in the McGrathNicol report, among other factors, highlighted employee costs being higher than industry performance.
“Analysis of employee costs indicates that the additional employee costs from non-batch plant employees and overtime claimed by the batch plant employees have contributed to the above industry performance observation.”
Mayor Peta MacRae said no decision had been made on the future of the batch plant.
“What we’ve done is put it out for expressions of interest and we’ll then be able to make a decision based on the offers the council receives,” she said.