August 4, 2015

Australian dairy consortium buys over Moxey Farms

The Australia Fresh Milk Holding Consortium, which consists of Australia's largest dairy farming families, the Moxeys and Perichs, China's New Hope Dairy Holdings and food processor Freedom Foods, had sealed a deal for the acquisition of Moxey Farms based at Gooloogong near Forbes following a few months of negotiations.

Farm operations at Moxey stretched over 2,700 hectares, with 3,700 cows capable of producing 50 million litres of milk yearly.

For now, it will be business as usual while plans are in place to increase stocks to close to double the current output, said Michael Perich, the director of the consortium.

"The main thing is to get the expansion of the dairy finalised and to start looking for greenfield dairy sites," Perich commented. "We would like to milk more cows out there, but we are just waiting for approvals. Hopefully, in the next 18 months to two years, we should be able to look elsewhere to build future operations."

As a result of the deal, Moxey now has a critical stake in the consortium which, in turn, is able to access every aspect of the dairy supply chain.

Milk production is currently the key focus of the grouping, said Perich. While the consortium originally seek to build larger milk supplies (through investments in Australian dairy farms) which could facilitate the delivery of value-added dairy products to China, the director stated that there are presently no short-term plans for fresh milk entering the mainland. 

"It's more about UHT and that really moves through to Freedom Foods to manage that process," Perich added.