US Boswell family to sell Auscott Limited in major land, water offering

Cotton giant Auscott Limited — one of Australia’s biggest foreign-owned agribusinesses — is up for sale with an eye-watering price tag.

Big business: Cotton harvest underway at the Auscott-leased Cobran Station at Hay in NSW. Picture: Andy Rogers

UPDATE: AUSCOTT Limited — one of Australia’s biggest foreign-owned agribusinesses — is for sale with an eyewatering price tag.

The Weekly Times has confirmed that US-based JG Boswell Company is seeking expressions of interests for its vertically integrated Auscott Limited business in Australia.

In a memo sent to growers on Wednesday, seen by The Weekly Times, Auscott chief executive Ashley Power said following the successful sale of Auscott’s Midkin aggregation at Moree last year “the interest in Auscott has continued” and “after much consideration the parent JG Boswell Company has decided to seek formal expressions of interest for Auscott and its subsidiaries”.

“The sale includes all the properties, water entitlements, ginning business, warehousing, classing and marketing,” Mr Power said in the memo. “The entire Auscott company is being offered as a full operating business as a going concern in its current form.”

The Auscott business include 22,000ha of developed irrigation country and more than 143,000 megalitres of water entitlements, five ginning facilities capable of producing more than one million bales of cotton annually, two warehousing operations and a classing laboratory.

The business is valued at several hundreds of millions of dollars. Some reports suggest the it could fetch upwards of half a billion dollars.

In the memo, JG Boswell chairman and chief executive James W Boswell said Auscott had “worked together with growers in a partnership over 57 years to build a cotton industry that is truly world class”.

“I have much respect for the Australian growers’ determination, innovation and humour, and will cherish the relationships my family and I have formed through our many visits over the years,” Mr Boswell said. “Now is the right time for the JG Boswell Company to focus our efforts on opportunities in our core operations in California.”

The memo said the sale would be made through and open and transparent process seeking expressions of interests with the close date of Wednesday, August 12. PwC has been recruited to handle the sale.

Auscott was founded by a single 2800ha farm near Narrabri in NSW in 1963 and now has operations in the Namoi, Macquarie and Murrumbidgee valleys of NSW, with administration, classing and shipping facilities in Sydney. Auscott’s move into the Murrumbidgee Valley occurred in 2014 with the establishment of new ginning facilities at Hay.

Last year, Auscott sold its Midkin aggregation to Canada’s Public Sector Pension fund, in a joint venture with Australian Food and Fibre, for a rumoured $300 million.

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