Thoroughbred industry leaders came out in force to the first day of a Planning Assessment Committee meeting to voice their opposition to the Drayton South proposed open cut coal mine in Australia's Hunter Valley, less than a kilometre from Coolmore and Darley's studs and in close proximity to many other Thoroughbred nurseries.
Peter O'Brien, managing director of Segenhoe Stud, told the PAC, “I would like to be a voice not only for Segenhoe, but for all 150 other boarding and agisting farms in the Hunter. Our cluster is entirely centred around stallion farms and it is quite simple–no stallions, no Segenhoe, or for that matter, no satellite farms whatsoever.”
Charles Jennings, chairman of Golder's Horse Transport, compared the Hunter's Equine Critical Industry Cluster to Silicon Valley and the departure of Coolmore and Darley as “catastrophic for the health of the equine cluster, as would Google or Apple leaving Silicon Valley.”
Coolmore Australia Chairman Ken Barry said, “There has never been a threat that comes close to the threat of Drayton South. Not Equine Influenza, not drought, not the floods of 2007, not fire, not the global financial crisis.”
Henry Plumptre, managing director of Godolphin, added, “If a mine approval can be allowed next to the two largest studs, which underpin the entire Equine Critical Industry Cluster, what hope is there for the future of the rest of the Equine CIC in the Upper Hunter?”
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