Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC) has bought the Beetaloo aggregation of stations in the Northern Territory for more than $300 million.
The aggregation is about 1.05 million hectares in size and includes Beetaloo Station, OT Downs and Mungabroom Station.
Land title documents show the aggregation settled on December 9 for $300 million, plus the value of the herd understood to be about 90,000 head.
The Beetaloo aggregation covers more than 1 million hectares in the Barkly Tablelands. (Supplied: Colliers)
The deal is easily the largest pastoral sale in the Northern Territory’s history and adds significant scale to CPC’s vast portfolio, which includes the neighbouring Newcastle Waters station, feedlots in Indonesia and cropping operations.
The sale has been a few years in the making, with billionaire Brett Blundy and the Armstrong family first putting the Beetaloo aggregation on the market in 2023.
Developing Beetaloo Station
Beetaloo Station on the Barkly Tablelands is regarded as one of northern Australia’s most developed cattle operations thanks to an extensive livestock watering project pioneered by John Dunnicliff.
Mr Dunnicliff and his family, including daughter Jane and husband Scott Armstrong, took over Beetaloo in 2002 and began a multi-million-dollar project to install hundreds of watering points and smaller paddocks — at a scale that had not been attempted in the north before.
John Dunnicliff was instrumental in transforming the carrying capacity of Beetaloo Station.
Billionaire retailer Brett Blundy, who started the chain Bras N Things, provided finance to expand the network of troughs, tanks and fencing across the property, which boosted access to grazing lands and productivity.
“John was doing something spectacular,” Mr Blundy told the ABC in 2014.
“It needed funding to be successful. It was too good an opportunity.”
Beetaloo’s herd of Brahman cattle expanded from 20,000 to 80,000 as the stock watering points were installed.
Following Mr Dunnicliff’s death in 2016, colleagues in the beef industry said his legacy at Beetaloo Station would live on.
“I suspect his development of Beetaloo will be a long-lasting memorial to his way of thinking and to his efforts of property and herd development throughout his career,” said the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association then-president Tom Stockwell.
Beetaloo Station is located on the Barkly Tablelands (NT). (Caddie Brain)
Under new management
The UK-owned Consolidated Pastoral Company is one of Australia’s largest beef producers.
CPC runs about 400,000 head of cattle across several stations in the NT, Queensland and Western Australia, covering more than 5 million hectares.
In recent years, the company has diversified into goats, sheep, carbon projects and cropping.
It recently bought the famous Rawlinna sheep station on the Nullarbor.
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CPC has also recently applied for three new water extraction licences in the NT, totalling more than 15,000 megalitres of groundwater per year.
The company is seeking government approval to take 4,737ML of groundwater per year for an agricultural project at Dungowan Station.
It has also applied for a 3,060ML/year water licence for Newcastle Waters and a 7,290ML/year licence at the neighbouring Tandyidgee Station for a “staged irrigation development over a 10-year period” where it would be looking to grow a rotation of crops such as grain sorghum, Rhodes grass, cavalcade and cotton.