Max Hatzoglou
An Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) report released at a recent community session has revealed that more than a quarter of odour reports in Sunshine North since March were associated with a textile factory .
The monthly reports indicated that textile factory, Flickers, had increased its odour emissions in March and April, with the EPA figures indicating more reports of odour coming from the site than in previous months.
The reports dating back to January 2021 showed the Flickers factory had only accounted for a small proportion of the total reports until March.
An EPA spokesperson said the odour from the Flicker’s factory was an “emerging issue”.
“While investigations suggest that odour issues in the area have decreased, odours from Flickers Australia is an emerging issue,” the spokesperson said.
“EPA officers are currently finalising compliance and enforcement actions and will communicate this to affected community members once these actions are finalised.”
Flickers director Yaron Flicker said the odour was not an offensive smell.
“In terms of the amount of odour produced, I don’t think it has changed much,” he said.
“I don’t believe we are producing much more, I personally haven’t noticed anything in particular different.
“We don’t have any which we would consider offensive odours.
“There’s smells everywhere, but I don’t think ours is particularly strong nor offensive.”
Mr Flicker said odour had increased in recent times due to a slight increase in production but was far less than in the past.
“It’s [production] been decreasing year by year for the last 20 years, and one of the competitors closed down in Tullamarine [so] we have just had a slight upturn in volume because we are picking up some of the stuff that they used to do,” he said.
“So we’re doing maybe 25 per cent of what we did 25 years ago so we’re producing less of everything.
“It’s only increased since February, the production, so they may have had more reports because we are producing a little bit more.”
