UK billionaire buys 700,000-hectare WA sheep station amid buying spree
One of Australia’s largest cattle producers, Consolidated Pastoral Company, now owned by UK billionaire Guy Hands, has acquired a vast sheep station in Western Australia for around $30 million or more amid the company’s rapid ramp-up into the sector.
The acquisition of the 711,638-hectare Madura Plains near WA’s border with South Australia is the latest in a run of major deals in the past year by Consolidated Pastoral, a sprawling agricultural outfit once owned by Kerry Packer.
“We see that there’s more upside in the sheep and wool industries than there has been over the last five or so years,” CPC chief executive Troy Setter told The Australian Financial Review.
“I think long term, sheep and wool is a good industry to be part of. We just continue to grow our business and increase our productivity.”
The run of deals began last March with CPC’s purchase of the nation’s largest sheep station Rawlinna Station from the MacLachlan family’s Jumbuck Pastoral after Fortescue abandoned its plans to acquire it for a renewable energy project. Rawlinna spans more than 1 million hectares on the Nullarbor Plain in WA.
Then just before Christmas, CPC bought Beetaloo Station, one of the Northern Territory’s biggest cattle stations from billionaire retailer Brett Blundy and the Armstrong family for around $315 million.
CPC’s $1.6 billion portfolio includes 11 stations in Australia and two feedlots in Indonesia, comprising over 5.5 million hectares of land with 400,000 head of cattle. The Packer family sold the operation to Hands’ private equity platform Terra Firma in 2009 for $425 million before it was subsequently bought out by Hands and his family, along with CPC management.
Exiting Madura Plains is fifth-generation family-owned agribusiness CC Cooper & Co, based in South Australia which had bought the property a decade ago. While the sale price of the station hasn’t been disclosed, industry sources familiar with the property said at least $30 million was being sought for it.
“We are delighted with the outcome of the sale process and excited to see what the future holds for Madura Plains after a period of significant development and investment by our family,” said managing director David Seth Cooper.
“We are particularly pleased that the Madura Plains team will be retained and no doubt given great opportunities within CPC, given the scale and diversity of their operations nationally.”
The sale is conditional upon CPC receiving approval from the WA government to transfer the pastoral leases, but has already received approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board.
The station itself is an aggregation of two pastoral leases, Madura and Moonera, with a combined area of 711,638 hectares and can carry more than 60,000 sheep.
Tom Russo, chief executive of commercial agency Elders and who managed the deal, said the sale demonstrated the confidence of Australian sheep and wool industry, despite the upcoming ban on live export of sheep from 2028.
“[This] has particularly impacted the Western Australian sheep market because that’s obviously where the majority of sheep were exported from,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of people, I guess, nervous around the outlook for the industry, and I think sheep production the west has shrunk considerably as a result.”
