How Terry Peabody senior made his millions

RICH Lister industrialist Terry Peabody spends his days globetrotting from his Brisbane mansion to his ski lodge in Whistler, winery in New Zealand and beyond. But it wasn’t always the case.

Terry Peabody, pictured in 2005, was worth nearly $1.5 billion at his peak in 2007.

• TJ Peabody cut off by rich-list father
• Terry Peabody’s $12m mansion for sale
• Staff left jobless as restaurateur goes skiing

RICH Lister industrialist Terry Peabody (senior) holidayed this month in the Cayman Islands.

That followed his annual retreat to Whistler, the Canadian ski resort where he relaxes each Christmas with his family at the luxurious lodge he owns.

Globetrotting is easy for the 78-year-old serial entrepreneur, who zips around the world in a private jet and has a diverse investment portfolio spread across many countries.

The plane can easily whisk him from Brisbane, where he has been trying to sell his $12 million riverfront mansion for more than four years, to New Zealand, where his family runs the well-regarded Craggy Range winery in Hawkes Bay.

Terry Peabody’s Moggill home is for sale.

Worth nearly $1.5 billion at his peak in 2007, Peabody still has a personal fortune estimated at close to $600 million.

Peabody made the bulk of his money in Australia, the US and Canada through a series of astute investments in fly ash, concrete, trucking and waste management starting in the 1960s.

Born in Guam in 1939 to a US military family, Peabody lived in Japan and America through his mid-20s before moving to Australia in 1965.

Like many other immigrants, he found work on the Snowy Mountain hydro-electric and irrigation scheme.

Peabody quickly became an expert on cement and realised that NSW government-owned coal stations were spending lots of money to dump huge amounts of fly ash, a waste product.

Terry Peabody floated his Brisbane-based Transpacific Industries Group in 2005 before going on a debt-fuelled acquisitions binge, splashing out $2.6 billion to buy more than 50 waste companies to bolt on to Transpacific.

But fly ash can be used to strengthen concrete so Peabody struck an exclusive deal to haul it away at no cost to government. His monopoly business was soon bought out by CSR concrete.

Peabody later replicated the fly ash scheme in Queensland, the US and Southeast Asia.

By the early 1980s Peabody pivoted in to the trucking game, snaring the Australian distribution rights for Western Star. He bought the struggling parent company in Canada in the early 1990s and eventually sold it for a reported $1 billion.

He also acquired a trucking firm in the UK.

Terry Peabody’s $12 million Moggill mansion.

Peabody next moved into the waste and recycling business, floating his Brisbane-based Transpacific Industries Group in 2005.

He then went on a debt-fuelled acquisitions binge, splashing out $2.6 billion to buy more than 50 waste companies to bolt on to Transpacific.

But the timing, in the lead up to the global financial crisis, proved catastrophic and Transpacific nearly went to the wall.

A US private equity group bailed out the group by becoming a cornerstone investor but Peabody stepped down as chairman in 2010 and sold his remaining stake in 2013.

Transpacific is still trading but changed its name to Cleanaway Waste Management in 2015.

TJ Peabody, who has closed four high-end restuarants within six months, reportedly claims to have been cut off by his rich-lister father. Picture: Mark Cranitch

Meanwhile, Peabody has been trying without success since 2014 to find a buyer for his acreage estate “White Waltham” at Moggill.

The 4.4ha riverfront property, which has been in the family for more than 40 years, has a six-bedroom main residence and four-bedroom staff quarters.

It also features a pool, two tennis courts, an orchard and a recently-built summer house for entertaining.

Peabody has gone through several real estate agencies, hoping to get $12 million for the property. It is now listed without a price guide.

The Courier-Mail today reported he has cut off his son after the closure of his dining empire.

Brisbane restaurateur TJ Peabody is understood to have confided that the restaurant assets have been taken over by his father, in a bid to repay business losses after he was forced to close four high-end restaurants within six months.