The Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) has asked\u00a0for a halt on\u00a0share trading until Friday, while the\u00a0company assesses the impact of the live export ban.<\/p>\n
The AACo is Australia’s oldest pastoral company and now Australia’s largest, with landholdings of more than 1% of the continent’s landmass and almost 500,000 head of cattle.\u00a0 Indonesia is Australia’s largest export market so the live export ban will affect the AACo’s profitability.<\/p>\n
It has been said that live export to Indonesia is not a huge part of the AACo’s operation.\u00a0 What many fail to realise is that agricultural production is not a lucrative business – every dollar counts – and the demise of one income stream, even if not a majority income source,\u00a0can easily mean the difference between profitability and running at a loss.\u00a0 It is no wonder the AACo requested a halt on share trading.<\/p>\n
All of Australia’s northern beef producers will be immediately\u00a0affected by the live export ban as the whole northern cattle industry is now\u00a0dependent on live export sales for financial viability.\u00a0 Many family companies will struggle to survive and a great number of associated businesses will have a tough time avoiding going broke – from helicopter mustering companies, trucking businesses, mustering contractors, fodder producers\u00a0through to retail businesses in towns – and companies involved in live export trading, such as Elders.\u00a0 Most severely affected will be pastoral operations in the Kimberley region of Western Australia as they have higher operating costs and are located the furthest distance from alternative sale options.<\/p>\n
Along with a myriad of cattle stations owned by family owner\/managers, there are a significant number of large companies that will be affected in addition to the AACo.\u00a0 These include Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC – majority owned by British investment firm Terra Firma, with the remaining shares owned by Ken Warriner – mostly northern Qld, northern NT properties and NT\/WA border,), North Australia Pastoral Co (NAPCo – privately owned by descendants of the original owners – mostly Barkly Tableland and channel country properties),\u00a0S Kidman & Co (SK – privately owned by Sidney Kidman’s descendants – mostly Qld channel country properties, plus\u00a0East Kimberley & northern NT properties), Heytesbury Pastoral Co (owned by Janet Holmes a Court and family – mostly Victoria River District landholdings), Western Grazing (owned by\u00a0Brian Oxenford’s family – Qld channel country and NT’s Victoria River District),\u00a0 Stanbroke Pastoral (owned by the Menegazzo family – mostly northern Qld), Jumbuck Pastoral (owned by the MacLachlan family – in northern Australia; mostly West Kimberley properties) and McDonald Holdings (MDH Pty Ltd\u00a0– owned by the McDonald family – mostly north Queensland properties), Paraway Pastoral Company (investment company associated with Macquarie Bank – northern Australia; properties in north Queensland), Tipperary Group of Stations (Allan Myers – northern Australia; NT).\u00a0 There are of course a number of other sizeable northern cattle station owning families and companies that will be severely affected by the live export ban, such as AJM\u00a0Pastoral (Alistair McClymont’s family business, north Qld\/Gulf), Yeeda Pastoral Company (Jack and Vicki Burton – Kimberley cattle stations), Brook Pastoral Company (David Brook & family – southwestern Qld) Acton Land and Cattle Co\/Acton Super Beef\u00a0(Acton family – north & central Qld), Baldy Bay Pty Ltd (Long Yard Trust – Sterling Buntine; East Kimberley & northern NT), properties owned by the Hughes and Scott families (North & Central Qld\/NT) etc.\u00a0 Perhaps these middle-sized businesses are the enterprises most likely to suffer – they’re the businesses most likely to have sizeable debts, incurred by extra land acquisitions.\u00a0 Some of these family companies date back decades and have expanded slowly over many years while others have grown rapidly in recent times, and these are the enterprises most likely to have difficulty coping with the demise of the live export market.<\/p>\n
Most big northern pastoral companies are\u00a0employers of large numbers of staff, especially of inexperienced school leavers.\u00a0 To lose this training ground for rural employees would have a very significant, long term effect on Australia’s pastoral industry.<\/p>\n
Many people will be waiting on the AACo’s assessment of the impact on the live export ban.\u00a0 Northern Australia is almost completely devoid of meatworks and the high-content brahman cattle that are ideally suited to northern Australia’s climatic conditions (and live export to tropical countries), are not ideal in southern Australia where European breeds prevail.<\/p>\n
Allan Myers\u00a0will be pleased he sold those 50,000+ head of Tipperary cattle \u00a0to the AACo a few months ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) has asked\u00a0for a halt on\u00a0share trading until Friday, while the\u00a0company assesses the impact of the live export ban. The AACo is Australia’s oldest pastoral company and now Australia’s largest, with landholdings of more than 1% of the continent’s landmass and almost 500,000 head of cattle.\u00a0 Indonesia is Australia’s largest export […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,7,165],"tags":[94,100,158,161],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1462,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions\/1462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}