Leading North Queensland cold carrier, Blenners Transport, has unveiled its new facility in Cairns.
The 3,200m2 building on a 16,000m2 site cost $17 million and took just on ten months to be completed.
It features nine docks with freezer and chiller storage, and dry storage in addition to hardstand and washbays for Blenners’ own daily transport activities.
The dry storage area has provision to hold 600 pallets while freezer/chiller capacity is now 900 pallets.
The new depot officially opened on the 18 December 2023, the week before Christmas.
Keir QLD designed and built the facility.
“It’s a major upgrade on the previous depot, which was operational for 15 years,” said Les Blennerhassett, Blenners Transport Company Director.
“In addition to the extra capacity it has state of the art ammonia refrigeration.
“From the shithouse to the penthouse would be one way to describe it.”
The previous 3,000m2 site pales in comparison to the new site.
“With nine docks there are more points to load and unload goods,” said Blennerhassett.
“Getting our trucks unloaded and reloaded quickly and getting all our customer freight out on nine docks versus four has made a massive difference,” he said.
“We can turn around our trucks a lot quicker.”
As a distribution point, the new depot services Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands, a food bowl that produces mangoes, avocados, bananas, and many citrus varieties.
“Cairns is a receiving depot. All the produce, everything that goes in there, is distributed to the big food chains like Bidfood, PFD Foods and IGA,” said Blennerhassett.
“All your fruit and veg, meat up through the Tablelands so it’s a main distribution depot for our linehaul freight.
“We have around ten to 12 vehicles working out of it full time servicing Cairns and the Tablelands.”
Blenners Transport services the rest of the state from its Brisbane depot.
The fleet recently introduced some new Kenworth T659 44 pallet roadtrains and two Kenworth K220 38 pallet PBS B-doubles.
“We’ve got new trucks all the time coming into our linehaul and local fleet,” said Blennerhassett.
Locally, on pick-up and delivery it runs a fleet of 48 Isuzu FXZ and FXY 1500s.
Drivers, given the increase in size, no longer encounter delays when awaiting access to the dock during peak periods.
“They can come back to the yard and drop the A trailers on them and put the Bs on them, get them unloaded and get out of there,” Blennerhassett said.
“For us, it’s going to be a big labour-saving exercise and a massive saving in hours of the week.”
He added, “It’s a beautiful depot and I’m pretty sure the builder is going to get nominated for a building award.”
