Agribusiness writer Andrew Marshall chats to host Kirsten Diprose about Elders’ $475 million Delta acquisition and its impact on farmers.
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00:00Hi, welcome back to AgriCast, Kirsten Dippros here, and it's been a big week in agribusiness
00:13and our agribusiness writer is with us for the National Network, Andrew Marshall.
00:19Welcome to AgriCast.
00:20Tell me about Elders.
00:22It's a pretty big acquisition of Delta, $470 million.
00:27Yes, it's sort of come out of the blue a little bit.
00:30Elders announced their intention to buy Delta Agribusiness, which is originally a company
00:36that started in New South Wales about 18 years ago and is now quite significant in the farm
00:42services space.
00:43Assuming, of course, that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission gives them the thumbs
00:49up for all the sites that they're going to buy.
00:52Is a takeover like this likely to mean job losses across either Elders or Delta?
00:57How will it look in the future for the business?
01:01Elders is saying that nothing will change at Delta.
01:03The business will continue to operate as a standalone, won't be rebranded as Elders.
01:08There won't be any changes in staffing numbers, we're told.
01:11What about farmers?
01:12Any impact in terms of merchandising or the way that farmers receive a service?
01:17There could be a few changes there.
01:19Elders is quite impressed with Delta's agronomy and technical expertise and it's an area that
01:24Elders wants to expand or has been expanding in and wants to build up some more weight
01:30there.
01:31Farmers may actually see some input from the Elders side of things and the two working
01:35together could improve the hands on the ground or the knowledge on the ground that's available
01:40to farmers.
01:41ACM Agri has been also reporting on the changes to the Elders financial bonus incentive program
01:45and that was announced to employees about two weeks ago.
01:49What sort of shape is Elders in?
01:50Elders is in pretty good shape.
01:52It's had a bit of a bad news week in some respects because they've had to report a 55%
01:58drop in their full year profit for the 2023-24 year.
02:02But it's the first time they've recorded something like that for many years.
02:06In the scheme of things, a 55% cut to a $45 million profit isn't too bad.
02:14It's been a pretty tight season.
02:16The expectation is that the deal will go through before June next year and most of the waiting
02:23will be for the ACCC to make its decision.
02:25Andrew Marshall, thank you so much for joining us on AgriCast.