History of the VLE
The seed that grew to become what is now VLE began with a conversation between one of the company’s founders, Mr Graham Osborne, and his former employer, Mr Allan Williams, over lunch one day in the 1970’s. Both men had become disgruntled with having to go through the regular process of treating cattle, which they had recently purchased from concrete floored saleyards, for foot injuries, along with others ailments and distress, caused as a result of having been in those concrete floored saleyards. Both agreed that should either man ever be in a position or have an opportunity to influence the design and operations of saleyards, they should do whatever was in their power to significantly improve the infrastructure and standards of the industry. Many years later, with the pending closure of the Dandenong Saleyards, such an opportunity arose.
Starting with nothing more than a pen and a blank sheet of A4 paper on the kitchen table, a small group of committed individuals came together to build, at their own expense and without government assistance, what would become the first privately owned, fully roofed, soft floored, multi agent, modern Livestock Exchange in Australia and the yard stick by which saleyards would be measured.
At the time, the design concept was considered radically ridiculous, extravagant and unnecessary. In the lead up to its opening and for some time after the founders of VLE, core to which were Mr Chris Sleigh, Mr Graham Osborne, Mrs Julie Khalid, Mr Bruce Baron, Mr Graeme Bennett and Mr Michael Quinert, received considerable flak and criticism. They were told that they had thrown their money away and would go broke, that they would damage the industry and leave it with a white elephant.
Despite the critics and the challenges, in just 3 years VLE went from being an idea on a page on the kitchen table to opening its first facility at Pakenham, Victoria, in 1999. As the years started to pass, time proved the company’s founders were correct and the critics were wrong. The success of the Pakenham livestock exchange saw calls from within the industry for other saleyards to update and modernise, with the first step for some being to adopt the term ‘livestock exchange’ as part of their name in place of ‘saleyard’. Prior to the inception of VLE, livestock marketing centres in Australia were simply referred to as saleyards.
In 2006, on the back of the success of the facility at Pakenham, VLE opened its second livestock exchange at Leongatha, Victoria. Again, this was met with considerable opposition and critics, but again as the years past the critics became converts.
