Australia’s biggest co-operative is shoring up its defences as Macquarie Asset Management pushes ahead with its $9.2bn takeover of logistics group Qube, convincing the nation’s farmers they’re next.
Perth-headquartered CBH – Australia’s biggest wheat exporter and owner of a vast storage and handling network and four port terminals in Western Australia – has formalised a strategy in the event it receives an approach from Macquarie or another financial buyer seeking an undercapitalised opportunity.
CBH is controlled by 3500 farmers who are in the midst of harvesting the state’s biggest ever crop, many working through the Christmas and new year period. The co-operative is considered ripe for picking off by many industry players almost 10 years after a GrainCorp-led corporatisation bid backed by First State Super (now Aware Super).
Macquarie advised GrainCorp on that attempt to unite the dominant east and west coast grains forces, and has been building its position in GrainCorp to 9.84 per cent from 8.43 per cent as of December 17.
Macquarie declined to comment on any interest in CBH. Any suitor faces a major hurdle in that 75 per cent of grower members would need to vote in favour of ditching the co-operative model.
CBH insiders, speaking on the condition they were not identified, said the co-operative’s board had discussed the Macquarie takeover of Qube and what could follow, and considered themselves in play.
Separate to that, there are suggestions CBH recently rebuffed an approach from Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund-backed SALIC, but sought to re-engage and may have offered the Saudis a long-term supply agreement underpinned by a big upfront payment. CBH did not respond to questions about Macquarie or SALIC.
CBH wants to invest about $3bn out to 2033 on upgrading its network in WA to boost capacity to export most of the crop from the state’s wheatbelt region in the first half of each calendar year – before new season northern hemisphere grain hits the global market.
The co-operative invested $590m in the network, including $339m to upgrade country sites and ports, in the 12 months to September 30 and it owns a rail fleet of locomotives and hundreds of new custom-built wagons.
CBH chief executive Ben Macnamara has said the group wanted to be able to export 2.5 million tonnes a month by 2028 to keep pace with growing crop sizes. The Grains Industry Association of WA predicts the state’s farmers will produce a record crop of more than 26.5 million tonnes, including 13 million tonnes of wheat.
The state has produced its biggest ever crops in four of the past five years after first cracking the 20 million tonne mark in 2021-22.
Qube, meanwhile, has been growing its footprint in WA, including with ship-loading infrastructure at the port of Albany, and has already made inroads into the GrainCorp business on the east coast.
The GrainCorp share price took a hammering last week after it said the east coast harvest was not delivering the expected volumes of wheat and other commodities into its receival and storage network across Queensland, NSW and Victoria.
GrainCorp said abundant global supply was putting pressure on margins and affecting the flow of grain into its east-coast supply chain.
Robert Spurway-led GrainCorp’s preliminary estimate of total receival volumes for 2025-26 was 11 million to 12 million tonnes – down from 13.3 million tonnes in the year ended September 30.
GrainCorp did not mention increasing competition as a factor, but Qube reported revenue of $898m in 2024-25 from what was the company’s first full year of operating a grain trading business.
Qube has outlined plans to expand into bulk exports and the container trade in WA, and the volume of grain passing through its export terminals – Quattro at Port Kembla and the Newcastle Agri Terminal – more than doubled to 3.08 million tonnes in 2024-25.
CBH once owned a stake in the Newcastle terminal alongside Qube as part of its plans to establish a presence on the east coast, but sold out to Qube in 2021.
In November, CBH sold its stake in a string of flour mills and a malting plant in Southeast Asia for $169m to a company controlled by its partner in the joint venture, Indonesian billionaire Anthoni Salim. CBH, which enjoys tax-free status as a non-distributing co-operative, last week posted a $208.3m profit on the back of a 20.4 million tonne harvest in 2024-25. The result included a $14.6m loss from its marketing and trading division.
Mr Macnamara said marketing and trading faced tough conditions, and he highlighted that the division had paid $4.2bn to farmers for their grain “in line with its purpose of driving a competitive price”.
The co-operative had about 4200 grower members when a group calling itself Australian Grains Champion, backed by GrainCorp, last made its corporatisation play in 2016. An estimated 700 growers have left the co-operative since then.
The bid valued CBH at about $3bn and promised to deliver farmers a cash windfall and shares in a new corporate entity.
It is understood CBH now considers itself worth up to $6bn, which does not allow for any corporatisation premium.
WA farmer Brad Jones, who was one of the big grain growers behind the AGC tilt, said the valuation represented a high multiple on a business that had just reported a $208.3m profit.
Mr Jones said CBH’s attempts to control the grain supply chain from end to end in WA were not good for competition and therefore not good for growers.
CBH argues that under the co-operative model, WA farmers pay much less in storage and handling charges than their counterparts on the east coast. However, CBH – wary of losing its tax-free status – no longer pays the storage and handling rebates that were a significant factor in the AGC bid being rejected at a grower vote.
Mr Jones said Macquarie had financial firepower backed by a track record of big, long-term investment in Australian agriculture and might see the value in creating a major grains company on both coasts.
“They’ve been building a position in GrainCorp. They’ve got a lot more capital than we (AGC) and there’s potential there to make CBH better and that would be of benefit to every grower in WA, if not Australia,” he said.