The three-way Chinese-Australian dairy consortium formed by Leppington Pastoral Company, New Hope Dairy Holdings, and Freedom Foods Group has finalized its $100 acquisition of one of Australia’s largest single-site dairy operations, Moxey Farms in New South Wales.
Moxey operates a 2,700-cow farming business on 2,700 hectares, approximately 340 kilometers west of Sydney that produces about 50 million liters of milk per year.
Moving forward, the Moxey family will continue to run the business in partnership with the Perich family which operates its own large-scale dairy farming business at Leppington Pastoral’s Bringelly site west of Sydney. This newly formed joint venture will become part of the new, Australian Fresh Milk Holdings (AFMH), which through this acquisition now controls strategic operations along the entire dairy supply chain including processing sites in Australia and China and distribution networks in China.
In early 2014 the Moxey family began the process of reviewing their operations with the goal of engaging a strategic partner or equity partners from overseas to help support their growth objectives which includes the building of other farms across eastern Australia.
The consortium agreement will allow AFMH to leverage Freedom Foods’ processing capacity in Sydney, Australia and New Hope Dairy’s Asian network to gain a foothold in the Chinese and South East Asian dairy markets. Freedom Foods currently produces a wide range of long-life beverage products, cereals, and snack bars, and operates an ultra-high temperature (UHT) treated milk operation at its Pactum Dairy site for export.
As part of AFMH’s plan to become a major player in Australia’s dairy sector, the group is expected to make additional investments in the near future in greenfield dairy production sites across Australia.
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