Giant snapping up farms
Webster Limited vies for Packsaddle Station as it moves into sheep
❝ The more salt bush we can get these guys the better.
— Maurice Felizzi
AUSTRALIA’S largest irrigation company, Webster, is snapping up pastoral properties as it expands its organic sheepmeat business to cover 305,500ha.
Webster chief financial officer Maurice Felizzi said the company was in the midst of negotiating to buy the 40,878ha Packsaddle Station, 175km north of Broken Hill, to create a triangle of three pastoral properties across the New South Wales/South Australian border.
Mr Felizzi said the company was already running dorper sheep on its 79,000ha dryland property Tandou and paid $12.5 million in March last year for the 185,600ha Kalabitty Station, with 13,500 breeding dorper ewes.
“We’ve moved into organic sheepmeat production,” Mr Felizzi said.
“The more salt bush we can get these guys the better. At Tandou we had dorpers and they seemed to be doing well.
“And we have an extremely passionate manager in dorpers, Paul Martin.
“An opportunity came up, which was Kalabitty, and we saw the commercial opportunity it offered. We’ve invested quite heavily in it (pastoral properties).”
Webster also has the opportunity to convert the NSW pastoral leases it has on Tandou and Packsaddle Station into freehold title, under new NSW regulations that came into effect this year.
Under the new regulations, leaseholders can convert their land for 3 per cent of its unimproved capital value.
But Mr Felizzi said converting the pastoral properties to freehold was not something Webster had considered at this stage.
The move to dryland properties marks a major move to diversify the Murray Darling Basin’s largest irrigation company’s portfolio.
But the company’s main focus is still clearly on water, given its last annual report shows it held a portfolio of 200,000 megalitres, worth about $290 million, to irrigate about 41,000ha.
Last month Webster bought the 934ha Sandy Valley almond orchard for $16.8 million, which is close to the company’s existing Riverina walnut operation at Tabbita.
Webster is harvesting its last cotton crop on Tandou this season, having sold the property’s Lower Darling water entitlements to the Federal Government for a $78 million compensation package last June.