Deals

CPC sells Queensland cattle property as Terra Firma continues search for buyer

Sell-down of CPC’s portfolio continues, leaving the firm with 11 properties as it continues to look for a buyer.

-

Consolidated Pastoral Company has continued the sell-off of its portfolio with the sale of the 80,000-hectare Mimong Station in north-west Queensland to Baldy Bay, a company owned by Sterling Buntine.

The sale price was not disclosed but is understood to be around A$20 million ($14.2 million; €12.5 million).

Mimong Station was one of the smaller properties left in CPC’s portfolio and has a carrying capacity of around 9,000 head of cattle. The sale included the plant and equipment on the station.

Buntine, the buyer, owns and operates cattle stations in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

CPC now has 11 stations left in its portfolio covering approximately 3.5 million hectares of land with a combined carrying capacity of almost 300,000 head of cattle.

It most recently sold three stations in the NT and WA to Vietnamese investment group Clean Agriculture and International Tourism for A$135 million.

CPC is owned by UK-based private equity firm Terra Firma, which has been seeking to sell the Australian company’s assets in their entirety since May 2018. It sold Queensland bullock-fattening station Nockatunga to Cleveland Agriculture last year in the first step of the divestment.

Mimong is the fifth property to be sold during this process.

Australian media reports last week indicated that CPC’s asking price for the portfolio was proving too high for prospective buyers.

CPC declined to comment beyond a statement from chief executive Troy Setter, who said: “We continue to be actively engaged with buyers interested in the CPC platform as a whole and in parts.”

He added that the sale of Mimong reflected the quality of the station and its strategic fit with Buntine’s existing pastoral interests.

“While challenging seasonal conditions in many areas of Australia have been well documented, CPC’s geographically diverse portfolio positions the business well in the current market and season,” Setter said. “We continue to benefit from strong demand dynamics for beef in Asia and around the globe, [and from] our Indonesian supply chain and investments in our properties and genetics.”