{"id":3049,"date":"2013-05-13T11:28:05","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T01:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/?p=3049"},"modified":"2013-05-13T14:05:10","modified_gmt":"2013-05-13T04:05:10","slug":"napco-north-australia-pastoral-co-for-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/napco-north-australia-pastoral-co-for-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"NAPCo – North Australia Pastoral Co – shares for sale"},"content":{"rendered":"

The North Australia Pastoral Co<\/strong> (NAPCo<\/a>) is one of Australia’s oldest large pastoral companies; having been established in the 1870s. Renowned for conservative, steady management (the most likely style to make a healthy profit, long-term); the ownership of NAPCo has always been kept as secret as possible; with long-term shareholders living unassuming lives out of the public eye.\u00a0 The London-based MP Evans Group owns around 30% of NAPCo and the Foster family (Tasmania) owns around 60%.<\/p>\n

NAPCo owns Australia’s (and the world’s) second largest cattle station, Alexandria<\/strong>, situated on the Barkly Tableland in the Northern Territory. (The largest cattle station in Australia is Anna Creek<\/strong>, in North-Eastern South Australia; owned by another large and very old pastoral company, and which is the most like NAPCo, S Kidman & Co<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

NAPCo cattle stations are not for sale but a share package in the company as a whole, is.\u00a0 While there is often some drama or another in agriculture; the ongoing animal rights extremist\/live export disaster plus a looming drought make it a very poorly chosen time to sell.<\/p>\n

It would be nice to see majority ownership of NAPCo remain in the hands of Australians, but given the amount of capital involved\/the price, this probably won’t happen.<\/p>\n

Gresham Partners<\/strong> <\/a>\u00a0 (an investment advisory company) are handling the sale of NAPCo shares.<\/p>\n

I feel for the uncertainty this brings to all the people who work for NAPCo; many of whom have worked for the company for many years or even most of their lives.<\/p>\n

One thing is certain. If someone buys NAPCo as a whole, it’s highly likely they’ll follow the path of the vast majority of other corporate owners, and only own it for a few years (rarely for much longer than 5 years). It’s incredibly sad to see such continuity of ownership end.\u00a0 I’ve never seen rapidly changing ownership have anything but a negative effect on these large cattle stations, where knowledgeable, experienced and caring staff are the biggest but most undervalued asset.\u00a0 This is a very sad day for the Australian cattle industry. Here’s hoping shares are mostly redistributed amongst existing shareholders, rather than sold to a corporate investor.<\/p>\n

Some of my favourite photographs have been taken on NAPCo-owned Alexandria Station. Two of them are included amongst the website header images; ‘To Gallipoli’ (outstation) and ‘Camp at Bore number eighty-three’ (near the northernmost point of Lake Eyre’s catchment).\u00a0 A number of Alexandria images are included in the book ‘A Million Acre Masterpiece’<\/a>, including the cover image, ‘The Barkly Breeze’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The North Australia Pastoral Co (NAPCo) is one of Australia’s oldest large pastoral companies; having been established in the 1870s. Renowned for conservative, steady management (the most likely style to make a healthy profit, long-term); the ownership of NAPCo has always been kept as secret as possible; with long-term shareholders living unassuming lives out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,10,165],"tags":[100,158,161,166,178],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049"}],"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=3049"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3053,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions\/3053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}