Environmental Management

Cheetham Salt is a responsible land manager of over 20,000 ha of often very unique and sensitive land including internationally recognised coastal wetlands. Solar salt ponds attract large numbers of birds and animals. Once established they form an important feeding and roosting area for migratory birds. The ponds themselves are teeming with aquatic life and demonstrate a variety of ecosystems functioning at different salinities.

The fields Bitterns discharge is constantly monitored to ensure no damage occurs to coastal mangroves.

Cheetham Salt has found that the natural systems inherent in some solar salt fields make the recycling of some saline waste material from industry possible. Cheetham Salt is working with environment protection agencies, industry and key specialists to explore opportunities to develop processes to recover the salt in some waste streams. By doing this Cheetham Salt will reduce the amount of salt being sent to land fills or discharged to waterways.

To optimise the environmental performance Cheetham Salt has expanded its comprehensive management systems to include the requirements set out in ISO 14000. By doing this Cheetham Salt will be at the leading edge of environmental management in Australia.

Salinity

The issue of salinity in the Murray-Darling Basin ("MDB") is a key focus for Australian governments as the nation comes to terms with massive land degradation and loss of productivity that has occurred during the last century and is continuing. Through extensive research over the last 20 years Australia is now in a position to better quantify the causes and extent of the salinity problem.

Efficient bank coring and maintenace ensures surrounding farming land remains unaffected by the fields operation.

Cheetham Salt has been active in the control of salinity in Australia for the past 20 years. Cheetham Salt operates a large scale salt harvesting operation on Lake Tyrrell in central Victoria. This plant is by far the single largest salt extraction facility in the Murray Darling Basin and removes over 100,000 tonnes of salt from the regional groundwater system. Salt is harvested from the lake and either value added on site or sent directly to customers in Sydney and Melbourne.

For over 40 years Cheetham have been selling salt products from natural groundwater sources in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. The salinity issues in Australia have raised the importance of this skill. The company is keen to use these skills to help develop sustainable solutions to specific applications. Cheetham salt is committing significant resources to understanding the technical issues that can make this more difficult than producing salt from sea water.

Cheetham Salt was announced as the winner of the Victorian Premier's 2005 Business Sustainability Award in the Large Business Category for developing a waste hide salt recycling program at its Corio operations in Victoria. This program takes otherwise waste salt from hide and skin customers and recycles greater than 5000 tonnes of salt per annum that previously was destined to go to landfill.