News

Another big new solar plant for Thurla

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 06:09:00

Another big new solar project has been confirmed for north-west Victoria’s large-scale industrial hub at Thurla, south of Mildura.

SIL Global Limited (SILG), a Hong Kong-registered company in the financial and technology development sectors has bought a 20-acre site on the Thurla Industrial Park.
SILG has the licence to manufacture solar products for the US technology developer V3Solar Coporation, which has developed a revolutionary solar collector (www.V3Solar/technology).
The President of V3 Solar Michael Neistat said the company was planning a large-scale state-of-the-art manufacturing and assembly plant, with construction to begin this year.
“The facility will enable production of spin cells for the second stage of the SILG solar power generation plant,” Mr Neistat said.
“The plant will allow us to implement our plan to build a solar generation plant comprising 800,000 spin cell units – the largest power station of its type in the world.”
The SILG project comes less than a month after the German company Belectric announced plans for a 5MW photovoltaic solar plant, also to be developed at Thurla.
The Thurla Industrial Park is becoming the hub for large-scale industrial development in north west Victoria, and is already home to big-name companies in the transport, concrete, earthmoving and engineering sectors.
But the estate’s developer Col Beasley said the new interest from solar was set to be the catalyst for the strongest year of employment and economic growth in the park’s history.
“The great thing about industries such as V3 and Belectric is that they bring with them jobs, and in turn they bring with them add-on economic activity,” Mr Beasley said.
“The new players in the solar field are going to be the catalyst for a lot of other industries going in out here,” he said.
“The V3 is a first stage development, and will be a manufacturing plant assembling components for distribution of solar products for farms.
“They are looking to produce and process about 800 000 of the spin cells to start with, so there will obviously be opportunities for engineering and logistics firms as well.
“It’s exciting that the vision we had when we started the industrial estate is starting to come together now.”
Mr Beasley said he was pleased the solar industry was now living up to its potential for north west Victoria.
“We have been working with solar since 2005 and we initiated a lot of the original solar activity that’s been brought to the area,” he said.
“We did a lot of work with Silex (formerly Solar Systems) before they decided to go to the Carwarp site because I strongly believed it was an industry that our region had a competitive advantage in.”
The Thurla Industrial Park has attracted a strong mix of industrial and technology clients, largely due to its location and large lot sizes.
One of the major operators setting up is Lamattina Beverages, the juicing operation of Australia’s largest carrot producer, Lamattina Farms.
“Our factory is well underway and we expect to be in at Thurla later this year,” the director Angelo Lamattina said.
“The move to Thurla is ideal because it gives us the opportunity to expand our operation and build the business – we’re far enough out of town that we don’t disturb anyone, but still close enough to the pool of staff that we need,” he said.
More than half of the lots in the first stage of the Thurla estate are now sold, and the Lamattina project marks the start to development in stage two.
“We’re getting more and more inquiries.  It’s been surprisingly strong and seems to be generated mostly by these solar announcements and by our location as a cross-road between Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide,” Mr Beasley said.
“At the moment we have interest from a couple of Melbourne-based companies looking for large-scale industrial land,” he said.
“We have everything all of Mildura’s advantages, with natural gas, access to labor and all the benefits of a regional city, but the advantage of space and the ability to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week at a much more cost-effective price.”