May 2, 2019

One month after Northern Territory pastoralist Sterling Buntine acquired the Mimong Station in North West Queensland from Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC)  for A$20 million (US$14.11 million), his Baldy Bay company has returned to acquire CPC’s Comley Station aggregation in central Queensland for a reported A$50 million (US$35.27 million).

In the later days of March, Sterling Buntine acquired the 79,970 hectare (197,610 acre) Mimong, which spans the northwest region of Queensland into the Northern Territory. The station joined Buntine’s portfolio of properties spread across the Barkly region of the Northern Territory and the Kimberly region of Western Australia.

In 2008, Buntine acquired the 400,000-hectare Alroy Downs Station in the Northern Territory for A$70 million (US$50 million), and, in 2016, was a member of an investor syndicate that attempted to acquire the famed S. Kidman Co. Other properties in his portfolio include Dalmore Downs, Lissadell Station, Bedford Downs Station, and Lansdowne Station.

At just under 80,000 hectares, Mimong is one of CPC’s smaller holdings – and is considered by the company which used it for backgrounding – a non-core asset. The land has the capacity to run 9,000 head of cattle, however, the sale, which included the land, plant, and equipment, did not include livestock.

“Comely and Mimong are two of our smaller properties, so their sale will not have much of an impact on the scale of the CPC portfolio,” said Troy Setter, CEO, CPC.

Originally acquired by CPC for approximately A$44 million (US$31.04 million) in 2012, Comely is an aggregation consisting of the Comley and Mapala stations covering 23.000 hectares.

The property, which had been held as a grazing asset, has extensive water assets including four flowing bores, broad reticulating systems, six equipped dams, and 37 open dams. With reliable yearly rainfall averaging 28 inches, the property has been owned by a string of high-profile owners within the northern cattle industry such as Prudential Pastoral, Heytesbury Pastoral, Hughes Grazing, Pegunny Pastoral, and lastly CPC.

Held by UK private equity firm, Terra Firma, rumors about the sale of the CPC portfolio have circulated since November of 2014, but the divestment process did not being in earnest until last year with the announcement of the sale of Nockatunga Station, a bullock fattening operation located in southwest Queensland.

In January of this year, CPC sold three more cattle stations: the Auvergne and Newry Stations in the Northern Territory, and the Argyle Downs Station in Western Australia – with a combined total of 740,000 hectares (1.8 million acres) of land, and 52,000 head of cattle – to Vietnamese investment group Clean Agriculture and International Tourism (CAIT) in a deal valued at $135 million.

Following the sale of Mimong and now the Comely aggregation, CPC still controls one of the largest portfolios of pastoral holdings in the country, consisting of 3.8 million hectares of land across ten stations with a carrying capacity of 326,000 head. The company also still holds a 90 percent stake in two feedlot operations in Indonesia through a joint venture.

Indeed, despite its string of divestitures,  CPC is diversifying its operations through expansion into crop production in the northern region of the country.

There exists a number of drivers behind the decision to expand into cropping, according to CPC CEO Troy Setter, including the establishment of additional channels of income.

“…whether its sorghum hay or sorghum grain, or whether the next crop following the sorghum could be something like mangoes or melons. We’re still working through that, but we’re certainly committed to developing and looking at all opportunities in northern Australia,” Setter told ABC.

“We continue to be actively engaged with buyers interested in the CPC platform as a whole and in parts,” said Setter. “Our geographically diverse portfolio positions the business well in the current market and season and we continue to benefit from strong demand dynamics for beef and the strong performance of our Indonesian supply chain and investments in our properties, genetics and team.”

-Lynda Kiernan