A renewed call for interested parties to participate in a working group to form a co-op received a less-than enthusiastic response from users.

Council’s infrastructure services director, Alan Clark, said meetings were now planned for this week to decide on a path forward.

"While we've had widespread support from producers for the concept and the need, very few have been willing to put their hands up and become active participants in the process itself of forming a working group and then potentially board members, which is a little disappointing,” Mr Clark said.

"We've had some but not enough to press the go button so we're looking at other ways of advancing it now.”

The council has undertaken a $3.7m upgrade of the Shanley Street saleyards.

Among the improvements there has been a roof installed to cover the selling yards and soft flooring installed to encourage more throughput.

Initial expressions of interest in a user-based co-op to manage the facility was aired in July 2014 with council administrators deciding the operation a livestock selling facility was not part of its core business.

The preference was to lease the yards to a local producer-owned co-operative rather than non-producer operator or an operator from outside Wangaratta. 

"We're looking at how we can best get the input from producers and their agents to help us run a really successful set of yards,” Mr Clark said.

"We're tossing all those possibilities around and trying to come up with the right answer.

“That's what we were trying to achieve with the co-op, and also a bit of ownership so that hopefully more of them would bring their cattle to the yards.

"So the agents are the key to all this of course because they're the ones who really influence the producers about where they sell and we want make sure that the agents are on board as well.”