Jumbuck sells Rawlinna, Australia’s largest sheep station
Jumbuck Pastoral has sold Rawlinna Station, the country’s largest sheep station – occupying more than 1 million hectares on the Nullarbor Plain in WA – to Consolidated Pastoral Company, as its long-term owners, the MacLachlan family, rationalise their 135-year-old business.
The sale price of the station, which has changed hands for the first time since family head Hugh MacLachlan staked out the land in the 1960s, was not disclosed, but the risk profile of the volatile asset, which could carry 70,000 sheep in a year or as few as 30,000, gave it a $20 million-plus value, market sources said.
“Rawlinna Station occupies an important space in our family’s history,” MacLachlan said.
“We are delighted that it will be passed to a custodian the calibre of CPC, with a strong record of sustained investment in our industry and whose owner takes a multi-generational view.”
The sale still requires Foreign Investment Review Board approval of the sale to CPC, owned by the UK-based Hands family, as well as approval by the WA government to transfer the pastoral lease.
Land stays in pastoral hands
The sale is a large piece of Jumbuck’s 12-property, 5.2-million-hectare portfolio, which has otherwise been split between Hugh MacLachlan – the chairman of Jumbuck Pastoral – and his sons Jock and Callum.
CPC’s purchase keeps the land solidly in pastoral hands, after Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group made a bid in 2023 to purchase Rawlinna for possible energy generation. After failing to secure approval from the state government, Fortescue withdrew its bid in November last year.
“We have been waiting for ministerial approval of the transfer for 11 months,” the company said at the time.
“Following this extended period, with policy ambiguity regarding government approval, we have chosen to withdraw from the sale of Rawlinna.”
CPC chief executive Troy Setter said the company – purchased by the Hands Family Office in 2020 and which owns nine stations with cattle, goats and a diverse range of crops in Australia, as well as two feedlots in Indonesia – would not divert Rawlinna away from sheep grazing.
“We are excited with the acquisition of Rawlinna that will see CPC return to large-scale sheep and wool production,” Setter said.
“We have no intention of converting Rawlinna away from sheep production. Rawlinna represents an opportunity for us to re-enter the Australian sheep production space at scale and accelerate our ambition of building out a quality diversified portfolio by both geography and production type.”
Tom Russo, executive general manager of commercial agency Elders, which managed the sale, said the campaign drew local and international interest.
“It was excellent to see the confidence in the industry,” Russo said.
The Jumbuck split led to Jock MacLachlan taking charge of the 58,680-hectare McCoys Well station in South Australia and the 505,857-hectare Derby Station in Western Australia, and Callum taking charge of arguably the most famous property, the 1.2-million-hectare Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory and the 541,400-hectare Killarney Station.
Callum and Jock MacLachlan are second cousins of former AFL boss and now Tabcorp chief executive Gillon McLachlan, who uses a different spelling of the surname.
Father Hugh and daughters Airlie MacLachlan, Islay McKenzie and Brooke Yates have kept running the other assets.
“Planning for family succession, most regrettably, sees my sons Jock and Callum departing the Jumbuck family,” Hugh MacLachlan said in 2023, announcing the break-up.
