St Vincent de Paul Society to open new resource recovery facility in Tamworth

A mammoth amount of donations has led the St Vincent de Paul society to push ahead with plans for a new large-scale hub facility.

North West regional manager David Powter told the Leader the new site, located at 64-68 Barnes Street Taminda, will sort and recover local donations before they are dispersed across the region.

He said donations collected in the country music capital will soon travel to stores in Werris Creek, Quirindi, Barraba, and beyond.

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"All those surrounding towns don't have a large population, so their donations are quite small," Mr Powter said.

"But this [Tamworth] being a large regional centre, brings in a larger rate of donations."

The society lodged a development application with Tamworth Regional Council to re-purpose the vacant building into a 'resource recovery facility' in February.

The new site will include donation bins, as well as a shopfront to purchase donated goods.

Acting executive director Phil Coyte said keeping up with the amount of donations coming from Tamworth residents had been a "long term problem".

"Our own facilities haven't backed up the supply," he said.

"This new facility is going to aim to ensure that we can get through a lot more sorting and donations."

It comes after St Vinnies removed all donation bins at their Peel Street thrift store, after they were used as a dumping ground.

While supply is high, demand is also matching the rate of donations.

Mr Coyte said the society had seen increases in customer demand for a variety of reasons.

"It's not just those affected by cost of living impacts," he said.

"Younger demographics are really weighing into that environmental sustainability, re-use, paradigm."

It's anticipated the facility will open six days a week and offer a handful of employment opportunities.

Getting "good products" into smaller stores will be an "added advantage", Mr Coyte said.

The resource recovery facility is expected to open by September.

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