National agency business Landmark has made an internal appointment to fill its widely advertised national livestock manager role.

Taking up the key position is career agent, Mark Barton, who has re-joined the company on a permanent staff basis after spending the past eight years operating in a contract/consultancy capacity.

Most recently, Mr Barton has acted as Landmark’s national commercial manager, livestock.

He has spent 25 years with the company in one form or another, including four years serving as general manager livestock back in the Wesfarmers days, before stepping out into a consultancy role when AWB bought the business. He also served as regional and divisional manager in other earlier Landmark/Wesfarmers/Dalgety organisational hierarchies, mostly in Central NSW and the Southern Tablelands.

As part of his livestock business development responsibilities during the past few years, Mr Barton initiated the start-up about five years ago of Landmark Equine, which has since grown into a $12 million a year turnover business in performance horses.  The equine division is now run as an extension of Landmark’s stud stock business.

He also regularly bought between 20,000 and 30,000 steers a year for key account clients as part of his livestock procurement role under his most recent contract-based national commercial management responsibilities.

Now aged 44, Mr Barton has had extensive hands-on agency experience in both cattle and sheep. Amongst other things, he carries a wool classer’s ticket. His early agency exposure in the Dalgety days was at Griffith, Cobar, Cootamundra and Goulburn – all more sheep than cattle – but later moved to managing big cattle branches including Forbes, Dubbo and Wagga.

During his time at Goulburn he also managed a 20,000 bale wool register.

For much of the past 20 years he has acted as a company auctioneer, doing a lot of stud stock work across NSW and Victoria, both sheep and cattle.   

The appointment brings to a close the arrangement where Eric Broad had national management responsibility for both live exports and livestock for Landmark – a situation that some saw as unsustainable, given the extent of both portfolios.

Mr Broad will now concentrate on the live export stream, as national manager for Landmark Global Exports.

While Landmark has a multitude of different branch structures in play across Australia, about 300 of the 400 branch locations or points of representation currently include a livestock presence.   

Mr Barton will operate from Landmark Operations’ Melbourne office, reporting to managing director, Richard Norton.