Warrick and Glenys Ryan moved to Springsure when Mrs Ryan accepted her position as the local pastor, but the couple had no intention of buying the unused GrainCorp silos and opening a business.
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Fast forward three years, and Mr Ryan is in partnership with his younger brother, Dan Ryan and his wife Kaye, and they are gearing up for their first season offering grain storage for local growers.
The site has not run since 2014.
Mr and Mrs Ryan lived in Capella for a decade before making the move to Springsure.
The decision to purchase the infrastructure from GrainCorp came after a simple question from Mr Ryan.
”I was selling hay so I called GrainCorp to ask if I could rent one of the sheds for storage,” he said.
”One day I asked them if they'd want to sell it (the site) and they said yeah - so that's how it all came about.
“You knock on the door, some open, some don't.”
That was only 12 months ago, and after taking over officially in May it has been all systems go getting everything up-and-running in time for the wheat and chickpea harvests.
”We're ready to go now for this harvest, just for warehousing and storage (for local growers),” he said
“We've got a few multinationals that want to store here which is good as well.
“We've got a few customers lined up already, there's a bit of wheat starting to come off but no doubt the chickpeas will soon follow.
“There's some pretty handy peas around, but some not-so-handy as well.”
Mr Ryan said there was a grain dryer on-site which he wants to get running in time for next year so they can dry sorghum.
But the most stir has been caused by re-opening the 120-tonne weighbridge.
“We've had it going for a couple of months and there's a lot of people wanting to weigh cattle and just general grain,” Mr Ryan said.
“That's something that the community has really embraced - I've had people ringing me up asking about whether it's going, saying they need to weigh cattle, it's something that the community really appreciated when we got it going.
“We haven't done it to make money out of that - it's just something that everyone has wanted.”
Moving forward, Mr Ryan said he hopes to continue to expand the business and what it can offer, including moving towards grading grain as early as next season.
”We've got enough land where we could put bunkers in or some more silos, so as the business grows there's potential to do containerised grain out of here as well. Never say never,” he said.
Kelly Butterworth
Rockhampton-based journalist covering all things ag.
Rockhampton-based journalist covering all things ag.
