Paraway’s Bulls Run station in Southern NSW.

ONE of Australia’s largest agricultural portfolios is about to hit the market, six months after it was announced that Macquarie Asset Management would put Paraway Pastoral up for sale.

Paraway is one of Australia’s biggest agricultural companies, with pastoral, cropping and feedlot operations spanning from the Gulf country in Queensland to Western Victoria.

Beef Central understands Macquarie plans to sell the business as a whole, with one source stating Macquarie would want to exhaust that option before considering splitting its portfolio of properties up.

It has been reported that Paraway could be worth more than $2.5 billion, and a source in the property market told Beef Central there is already a lot of interest in the entire portfolio – including from international investors.

Historically it has been considered more financially worthwhile to split a portfolio of properties up and sell individual assets, as was discussed during the sale of Stanbroke in 2004 and Proterra Investment Partners cropping portfolio in western Victoria in 2021.

However, Beef Central has been told Paraway might be the exception, with more interest being shown in the company as a whole.

“There are three categories of buyers who are already showing interest in the company. There are natural capital buyers who are looking for big swags of land for environmental benefits or to accrue carbon credits,” one source told Beef Central.

“Secondly the traditional corporate buyers from North America, Asia and the Middle East, and thirdly there are private equity groups who are considering Paraway to integrate with processing assets to build a large-scale integrated red meat supply chain,” he said.

While the formal sale process is yet to commence, Beef Central has been told by a number of large institutionally-owned companies they are interested in the portfolio but are yet to inspect properties.

Paraway’s portfolio

Over 18 years Macquarie Asset Management put together the Paraway Pastoral portfolio of properties to run cattle, sheep and crops.

The assets currently include 28 agricultural properties with the capacity to carry more than 250,000 cattle and 200,000 sheep.

According to its website, Paraway operates beef breeding, growing and grass backgrounding enterprises across all areas of its operations.

Its properties in Central and Southern NSW and Victoria are used for sheep breeding and growing as well as premium cattle operations.

“In addition to extensive livestock operations, Paraway has more than 40,000ha of dryland cropping and 3400ha of irrigated crops, producing a variety of cereal crops (for both sale and fodder cropping), legumes, rice and cotton,” its website states.

A substantial amount of grain and hay produced is retained for use in the sheep and beef enterprises.

Macquarie Capital is undertaking the sale process.

Relate story: Macquarie recently made an $11.6 billion bid for logistic company Qube.