Local families snap up popular Scenic Rim dairy and 4Real Milk brand
Local Beaudesert farmer Brad Teese and Brisbane real estate agent Doug Wyatt, and their families have bought the Tamrookum Dairy as well as the popular 4Real Milk brand from the Dennis family.
The 149ha robotic dairy at 9023 Mt Lindesay Highway in Scenic Rim, just over an hour’s drive west of Surfers Paradise, was put up for sale in July last year with an asking price of $10 million.
Led by Greg Dennis, the Dennis family established the 4Real Milk brand in 2013. It supplies a range of dairy products to supermarkets, cafés, restaurants and milk bars across Queensland, while also offering dairy tours.
The dairy, which can process 10,000 litres of milk a day, the 4Real business and brand as well as all livestock, farming infrastructure, plant and equipment was put up for sale last year as part of retirement plans for Mr Dennis’s parents Brenda and Darrell and his uncle and aunt, Ray and Rose Dennis.
They are the most recent custodians of the property, which has been owned by the Dennis family since the 1930s.
“It’s eight years now since we launched 4Real milk, I think it’s a really exciting opportunity for the continuation of what I started,” Greg Dennis told Queensland Country Life last year.
New co-owner Brad Teese and his family own stock feeding company Teese Feeds based at Beaudesert. Mr Wyatt is the principal of Brisbane real estate firm New Image Real Estate.
“The new owners want to produce local quality products from a family business for family consumption,” said Danny Bukowski from C1 Realty, who negotiated the sale.
Mr Bukowski said the new owners had already increased the number of robots used to feed and milk cows from four to six, improved the irrigation on the farm and introduced a new breeding program.
Tamrookum Dairy will only supply the Queensland market, which requires more than half of its dairy needs – about 330 million litres a year – to be trucked in due to the shutdown of more than 80 per cent of its dairies over the last two decades.
More broadly, the acquisition of Tamrookum comes amid heightened investor interest in the dairy sector, which has returned to profitability since the milk price crisis five years ago that sent many dairy farmers broke.
This financial year, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (ABARES) is projecting incomes for dairy farms to increase by around 35 per cent to average $338,000 per farm.
“Higher milk prices, favourable seasonal conditions, increased milk production and lower feeding costs have contributed to the increase in incomes from the drought affected lows of recent years,” said ABARES.
In October last year, Aurora Dairies, one of the largest milk producers in the country and backed by Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board, acquired the Clydebank Aggregation in Victoria’s Gippsland for around $20 million.
Also last year, agricultural funds specialist Duxton Asset Management contracted buyers for six of the farms in its Victoria-based Ace Dairy Holdings.