The big news in the northern property market just keeps rolling with the listing today of one of the Barkly Tablelands most well developed stations for sale today.
Beetaloo and Mungabroom, developed by the late innovative cattleman John Dunnicliff with financial backing from retail magnate Brett Blundy, is being offered for sale by the Dunnicliff family’s Barkly Pastoral Co.
The Beetaloo aggregation spans 1,050,000 hectares of the Barkly Tablelands.
With investment backing from billionaire Australian retailer Brett Blundy, Mr Dunnicliff and his family invested $40 million over the past 10 years to increase the number of watering points on the property from just 40 in 2002 to more than 600, covering more than 90pc of the land area, today.
The ambitious project lifted the aggregation’s carrying capacity from around 20,000 cattle to an estimated 100,000 now. The properties are currently carrying about 85,000 cattle.
Following his death earlier this year Mr Dunnicliff was posthumously awarded an Order of Australia medal for services to the livestock industry.
The sale is being overseen on behalf of the Barkly Pastoral Co family by Ben Cameron of Bentleys International Advisory.
In an article today the Australian Financial Review speculates the aggregation could fetch $200 million.
The 10-year development program has been focused on allowing cattle to access as much of the country across the aggregation as possible.
“A lot of people say to us we’re crazy, and we respect that, they’re welcome to their opinion,” Mr Dunnicliff explained to Beef Central last year as he was buying 10,000 weaners to stock the newly developed paddocks.
“I think long term, if you want to utilise the land, you have to take the water to the cattle, you can’t take your cattle to the water. It doesn’t work.
“Cattle do two things, they make energy or they make product. You can’t sell energy, you only sell the product. If you don’t take the water to the cattle, you’ll burn up too much production, and that is not economic.”
To read more on the Beetaloo development story click here
In a statement supplied to Beef Central the Dunnicliff family and the Barkly Pastoral partners said they had made a decision to divest the properties after John Dunnicliff’s passing and feel the timing is right, as the business moves from development phase to operational phase, together with strong global investor demand.
An Investment Overview document that contains details on the properties and business assets will be made available to potential interested parties in early October 2016.
Interested parties are then asked to register their interest and sign a Confidentiality Agreement, following which they will be issued with an Information Memorandum providing complete details of the sale assets.
The details of properties being offered for sale, on a walk-in-walk-out basis, are:
i) Beetaloo Station (including the land known as OT Downs) 60km east of Elliott and 800km south of Darwin in the Northern Territory, on the western edge of the Barkly Tableland comprising 707,800 hectares.
ii) Mungabroom Station adjoining Beetaloo Station to the south east comprising 346,900 hectares.
iii) The aggregation is currently running approximately 85,000 Brahman and Brahman cross cattle.
The properties have a carrying capacity in excess of 100,000 cattle.
iv) The properties have been extensively developed since they were acquired in 2002, with 74 bores and 603 watering points covering approximately 92.5% of the total land area.
In the developed areas, a beast needs walk no further than 2.5km to a watering point.
“We are commencing preparation for the sale process and from our recent experience as advisors to some of the largest transactions in the Australian beef cattle industry we are confident that there will be significant interest. Given the scale of the properties, size of the cattle herd and the extensive on-farm development Beetaloo is arguably one of the most improved large scale cattle production businesses in Australia,” Ben Cameron said.
“Barkly Pastoral Co plans to seek interest in the properties from Australian and overseas parties. It is expected that expressions of interest will close in midDecember, after which a short-list of interested parties will be selected to proceed to due diligence in January 2017. Weather permitting, we expect to complete a transaction by June 2017”.
For more information about this sale process please contact Ben Cameron or Brendan Goulding at Bentleys International Advisory in Brisbane Ph: (07) 3222 9777.
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