A small business owner is reeling after heartless thieves stole a valuable and integral part of his business – a cool room trailer.
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Braydon Andrews is the latest victim of theft in Ballarat’s CBD that police officers are determined to target and address.
The young earth mover has spent the last four years establishing a butchery business – Braydon’s Farm Butchery – that sees him butcher meat on-site for farmers in the region.
The self-starter hopes to make the butchery business his full time source of employment in coming years and had recently extended his business.
Three months ago he purchased a second custom made cooler trailer. He stored that trailer and the original trailer (pictured) at a Learmonth Road industrial estate. On Thursday it was gone.
Mr Andrews said video footage showed offenders cut the padlock off the estate’s secure gate just before 4.20am before making a bee-line for Mr Andrews’ trailer.
Video footage showed the offenders bolting to Mr Andrews’ trailer and cutting off multiple secure padlocks before taking off with it, he said.
“They’re $15,000 to set them up as a custom built cool room, I havn’t got any insurance on the unit. I’ve had it for about three months and hadn’t got around to setting it up,” Mr Andrews said.
“Yeah it is (devastating), it makes it hard to replace as I'm only a small business owner and it takes a long time to make that money to replace it.
“It upsets me – I’ve worked fairly hard to get to where I am now, left school at 15 and I’ve been working to get to this. Then you’ve got these people coming and taking it.
“They need to go and do some work.”
Mr Andrews reported the theft to police and has urged anyone with information about the custom-built trailer to contact Crime Stoppers.
Superintendent Andrew Allen has told The Courier police are using overt and covert tasking to zero in on recidivist offenders who are largely responsible for high volume crime. The week The Courier will focus on vehicle theft in the Most Wanted series.