The Queensland government announced it would introduce a container refund scheme in July 2016.

The scheme was originally slated to commence July 1 but has been delayed until November 1 to give collection infrastructure time to be ready.

TOMRA collection solutions has been awarded the task of building the 10 south-east Queensland refund depots before November 1.

Five of the 10 depots will be built in Brisbane.

Applications seeking approval to build two of the Brisbane depots have already been submitted to Brisbane City Council for approval, but the further three applications are yet to be submitted.

TOMRA submitted the application to the council on July 17 proposing a container-refund depot be built at 281 Montague Road.

Currently, a two-storey commercial building occupies the site and is leased to an office and storage warehouse business.

The application submitted by TOMRA Collection Solution Australia to the council said the proposed depot would be located within the existing commercial building.

“It is anticipated that customers will arrive at the depots by car to refund between 50 and 500 containers at a time,” the application said.

A front-of-house area open to the general public with 10 reverse vending machines fitted into the walls, bag-drop points, a bulk delivery area for commercial customers and a bank teller opening for collection of vouchers has been proposed at the site.

The application said any containers deposited would be stored at the West End location overnight before being manually sorted by staff the following day.

It was proposed two to three full-time staff would be employed at the centre with the depot to operate from 7am-7pm.

“TOMRA has found that weekends (particularly Sunday) are the busiest days for collection, as customers tend to exchange containers when they are out on the weekend or before/after their weekly supermarket shop,” the application said.

There are 35 car parks proposed for the site.

An application for a container refund depot to operate at 428 Bilsen Road, Geebung, was lodged with the council on July 17.

This is within an established industrial area, with close proximity to Sandgate Road, and an existing industrial building is on the site.

The Geebung proposal is similar to that at West End with 10 reverse vending machines fitted into the walls, bag-drop points, a bulk delivery area for commercial customers and a bank teller opening for collection of vouchers proposed.

This depot is also proposed to have two to three full-time staff and operate 7am-7pm Monday to Sunday.

There would be 13 car parks on site.

Pre-lodgment minutes of a meeting with TOMRA and the council revealed there are three additional refund depot sites TOMRA hoped to deliver in Brisbane.

While the development applications are yet to be lodged, the sites are:

The minutes said TOMRA had discussions with other local governments in south-east Queensland about operating the 10 depots, but a majority would be in Brisbane.

“The required timeframe for approval of all proposed use locations is mid-to-late August,” the minutes said.

“It was noted that the lease of the sites are conditional on council approval; consequently, the fit out of the buildings cannot be commenced until a decision is made.

“The applicant intends to keep council updated on the progress of preparing the applications to assist with expediting the assessment of the applications once lodged with council.”

Industry-based not-for-profit group Container Exchange (CoEx) has been appointed by the state government to develop and run the refund scheme in Queensland.

CoEx chair Alby Taylor said CoEx ran an open request for proposal tender between December 2017 and March 2018 and have been working through an evaluation and commercial negotiation process since then.

"Due to probity and commercial-in-confidence considerations, we are unable to comment publicly on individual applications or applicants at this stage," he said.

"We are committed to having more than 230 refund points ready for the scheme’s launch on November 1 and having more than 300 in place within 12 months of the scheme's commence, if not before.

"We are very confident that we are on track to hit those targets."