Cedar Meats sells to Global Meat Exports

The family run abattoir dynasty Cedar Meats has been partially bought-out. Some family members will depart but others will remain senior.

Cedar Meats at Brooklyn. Picture: Andrew Hensha

One of Victoria’s best-known family-owned meat processors, Cedar Meats, has announced a change in ownership, but two Kairouz family members will remain in charge of operations.

And The Weekly Times can reveal the ownership behind Global Meat Exports — the “new corporate parent entity”, as described by a Cedar company statement this week.

“The business will remain family-operated with both Pierre and Tony Kairouz continuing to head up operations as well as maintaining a substantial ownership and control in the new corporate structure,” the statement read.

General manager Tony Kairouz said it would be “business as usual” and trading would continue as Cedar Meats Australia.

The company statement read that “family shareholders have been working on succession planning” for some time.

“The transition enables two important objectives for Cedar Meats – firstly it allows nonparticipating and retiring family shareholders to depart.”

Cedar was established in 1984 by six Kairouz brothers as a butcher shop in Northcote, growing to a fully integrated export processing facility in Brooklyn, employing up to 300 people with a turnover greater than $200 million a year.

Global Meat Exports Pty Ltd - the new parent entity for Cedar - was established in November 2018 by Neil Wilson and Meneloas Stamatopoulos as part of a succession plan.

The number of shares, shareholders and directors has changed since then.

Prominent barrister Robert Richter QC and wife Anne owned a 5 per cent stake at one point.

On November 28 last year, 300 GME shares were transferred to Austagri Group Ltd, a company established in October 2019, by a group of businessmen with 101 million shares issued for $10,100. In February this year, share capital was increased to $25.5m.

It is not clear whether Austagri owns 100 per cent of Cedar Meats or the Kairouz family hold substantial shares in Austragri. Current Austagri directors are Indian-born Narinder Bahl, Hong Kong-born Andrew Chan and Australians Paul Fielding and Alan Schmidt.

Mr Schmidt, who has long been involved in cattle companies, is now the sole director of GME on top of his role at Austagri Group.

He and wife Rachel owned Otway Livestock Exports, which had shipped live cattle to Japan since 1995.

Cedar Meats was not buying at Bendigo saleyards earlier this week, and a spokeswoman told The Weekly Times the Cedar buyers would be back at saleyards next week.

The company had decided to pause operations for a week to conduct a stocktake, she said.

The current high Covid-19 case numbers in Victoria was another reason for the pause, she said, however, no Cedar workers had contracted the virus.

Mr Kairouz said it was an “opportune time to close our operations for a week, commencing 11 October for the five-day working week”.

“We are also taking the opportunity to ensure those staff who haven’t had their second Covid vaccination have it next week,” he said.

“We are so close to being the first in our industry to be fully vaccinated.”

Last year the business was hit hard by Covid-19 outbreaks.

Cedar Meats was the site of the state’s largest coronavirus outbreak during the first wave of the virus, resulting in 111 cases during April and May.

However, the state government’s public accounts and estimates committee report, which was tabled in state parliament in February of this year, praised Cedar Meats for co-operating with the Department of Health and Human Services.

Further announcements about the future ownership structure of Cedar Meats, and its operations in Victoria, are expected this week.