A heads of agreement has been signed between the Perich family-owned Leppington Pastoral Company, at Bringelly, which forms part of the Australian Fresh Milk Holdings consortium, and the family-owned Moxey Farms, which moved from Richmond, in the Hawkesbury Valley, to Gooloogong, in the Lachlan River Valley, in 1997.
The deal develops a four-way partnership between the Moxey and Perich families, the Chinese private company, New Hope Dairy Holdings and the Australia Stock Exchange-listed food processing company, Freedom Foods, in which the Perich Group has a 69 per cent holding..
In November last year, Freedom Foods and the Perich Group signed a memorandum of understanding with the New Hope Group to investigate the establishment of new large-scale intensive dairy farms in Australia.
New Hope has earmarked $500 million to invest in Australian agricultural assets over the next decade, with the bulk of these funds expected to go into the dairy sector and be invested alongside the Perich family.
Leppington Pastoral Company, founded by the Perich family in 1951 with 25 milking cows now runs 2000 head in Bringelly, and Moxey Farms, near Forbes, runs 3700 milking cows producing 50 million litres of milk annually
The collective milk production from both the Moxey and Perich enterprises will total 75 million litres each year.
The deal has to receive Foreign Investment Review Board approval.
The Perich family began dairying in 1951 as a sideline to vegetable growing, while, today, it is better known for its property development business, which controls 12,500 housing lots in Western Sydney, the 1100-hectare Oran Park Town project and a 50 per cent stake in the Narellan Town Centre, which is undergoing a $150 million expansion.
