Over the past decade, Townsville’s city fathers have worked tirelessly on strategies to establish the region as a centre for base metals processing excellence. These strategies have focused on the critical areas of energy, industrial land, transport infrastructure, water and a skilled workforce.
These efforts have produced innovative solutions in the Townsville State Development Area, committed new port road and rail access, new approaches to energy and the provision of competitively priced power. This has included the development of access to plentiful and competitive bulk raw water and environmentally benign high quality reuse water and partnerships between industry, government and training providers to ensure a ready supply of skilled people.
The Townsville region is an now an internationally recognised centre for the processing of base metals with world class facilities producing refined copper, zinc, nickel and cobalt. Companies such as QNI, XStrata, and Sun Metals have significant investments in Townsville.
Having recognised Townsville as the premier base metals processing centre in Australia, the Queensland Government is developing infrastructure to support heavy industry investment in base metals processing in the region.
The Queensland Government zoned Townsville State Development Area at Stuart has been designed to co locate heavy industry close to road, rail, port, water and power access.
The completion of a major Coal Seam Methane gas pipeline from Central Queensland to Townsville in October 2004, has enabled the establishment of a 220MW Base Load Power Station at Yabulu just North of Townsville which commenced production in February 2005. With the establishment of the pipeline, further base load power stations are under consideration for the Townsville area including a further 400MW gas fired plant to be developed on State owned land in the Townsville State Development Area.
The Port of Townsville has maintained its status as the fastest growing port in Queensland. During the 2003/04 financial year, the Port handled more than ten million tonnes of cargo and achieved record trade throughput for the 17th consecutive year.
