Swanbuild flies into town

MODULAR residential and commercial building company Swanbuild officially announced their arrival in Bendigo late last week as the newest player in the region’s construction industry.

Justin Lloyd is the project adviser for the businesses’ commercial building division, Pretect, and said he was excited to expand the Swan Hill based company and bring jobs and significant investment to the area.

“If it’s going to replicate what’s in Swan Hill we’d be looking at around 80 employment positions and millions and millions of dollars invested locally already and [that] will continue as part of our supply chain,” he said.

“We’ve moved from one regional centre to another, we haven’t tried to expand into metro [areas]. We see ourselves as a regional business, we understand regional people and regional towns and the value in the basis of employing locally, buying locally, developing locally, putting all of that investment back into the local area.”

At the company’s $5 million site, which is still under construction in Kangaroo Flat, modular buildings will be constructed in a sheltered, climate-controlled space measuring 5000 square metres and then delivered readily built to clients.

Sales manager Travis Hall said the decision to expand to Bendigo was based on the city’s central location which allows them to deliver their buildings to locations up to 1000 kilometres away using a Bendigo-based transport company.

“This is why it makes so much sense to have this here,” he said. “This is a central point for us.”

Member for Bendigo West Maree Edwards said Swanbuild’s move will help the local economy and the onflow effect of their investment in the area will be “huge”.

“This is so essential for the ongoing benefit to our economy here in Bendigo,” she said. “We want to see more people investing in Bendigo.”

The new Swanbuild site is scheduled for completion in July and recruitment of tradespeople, sales and office staff is already underway.