BROOME pastoralist turned processor, Jack Burton has listed his Gingin abattoir for sale.

Mr Burton purchased the Gingin abattoir in 2012, after it had been closed for 16 months, with the intention of processing sheep and goats.

He planned to work the facility in conjunction with his proposed beef abattoir in Broome.

Mr Burton told Farm Weekly he now wanted to focus solely on the northern operation.

“We want to consolidate up north,” he said.

“We have a booming cattle industry, we have 90,000 cattle up here and we have the funding for the abattoir up here. We think that trying to continue to run the abattoir in the south is probably just stretching ourselves a bit.

“We still process our beef at the Gingin abattoir, but once we get (the abattoir) finished up here we won’t need to do that, everything will be processed there.

“The Gingin abattoir is really surplus to our needs, unless we were going to go into sheep in a big way, which I don’t think we will, so we decided to put it on the market.

“It will give someone a prime opportunity to buy a really good in-house abattoir for their own operation down there.

“It is perfectly situated to the Perth airport if someone wanted to export chilled carcases.”

Mr Burton said he will not be getting out of the sheep industry entirely, as he will be keeping his sheep property in Chapman Valley, but the Kimberley beef operation will be the prime focus.

“That’s where the excitement is for us,” he said.

“We are fully stocked and rather than have both cattle and sheep we just want to focus on getting everything up here going 100 per cent.”

Mr Burton said the capital from the sale of the Gingin facility, which has the capacity to process 700-800 small stock a day, will be reinvested back into the Yeeda Pastoral Company business, including expanding northern irrigation projects.

“Everyone is really interested in reinvesting back into their properties, it’s an exciting time,” he said.

“There is a fair bit of money tied up at Gingin, and that could be used better up this way in our core business.

“We are probably going to be redeploying this money into irrigation up here.

“We have a 200 hectare freehold block at Yeeda station which is right on the river, so we are keen to sell some assets and use that money to build the irrigation project.

“That will provide feed to value add the cattle for processing in the abattoir.”

Elders Real Estate pastoral specialist Greg Smith said the Gingin facility has been advertised for sale by tender.

“We will see what interest comes forward,” he said.

“We have had a lot of inquiries regarding abattoirs over the past 12 months.

“The property has plenty of potential, as it sits on 136 hectares.

“All the approvals are in place, that alone would cost someone a lot of money just to get what is there.”

Mr Burton had been using the boning room at the Gingin abattoir for his beef product coming down from the north.

In June this year, Mr Burton won the financial backing of ADM Capital, Hong Kong, which put the Kimberley facility’s progress back on track.

“The building has been finished for a couple of months now, since about April,” Mr Burton said.

“It’s really all the refrigeration, and structures to go.

“The kill floor will be our primary objective, so in the next five to six months we will finish the fit out.”

“We got government funding a few weeks ago for our road infrastructure, which was a big part of what was holding us up, so we have approval on that and now we are all guns blazing to get this finished.

“We are aiming for Christmas, but it may be a bit before that.

“We want it running this year so we can iron out any start-up issues early in the year to be ready for the season.”