‘We see this purchase as fantastic’: Ord Irrigation Co-operative
chairman David Menzel, near Kununurra.
The $100 million sale of Carlton Hill cattle station to Chinese-owned Kimberley Agricultural Investment is set to be the catalyst for a boom in the East Kimberley town of Kununurra and the surrounding Ord irrigation region.
The purchase, approved by the Turnbull government, is being welcomed by local farmers as the long-awaited circuit-breaker to stalled development, rising unemployment and a critical lack of agricultural scale and investment.
David Menzel, a 25-year-long farming pioneer and chairman of the Ord Irrigation Co-operative, is certain the display of long-term confidence in the region by the Chinese owners of KAI, Shanghai Zhongfu, through securing its own freehold cropping land will now drive value-added processing investment.
KAI plans to grow cotton, sugar, sorghum, chia, maize and other crops on nearly 14,000ha of Carlton Hill, once it is developed for irrigation, as well as continue to expand its cropping on the other 15,000ha of leased Ord irrigation land it controls in the region.
“We see this purchase as fantastic,’’ Mr Menzel said yesterday. “We can now start having discussions with KAI about industries to be developed to get us rolling. This expansion justified investment in the upstream processing facilities we have always lacked.
“One of the most frustrating things about farming in the Ord for 25 years is that we have always been constrained by land and how much we can supply to meet demand. This (KAI purchase) gives us all security of further land development and scale.”
Weekly Times Now
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