Duxton Farms is an Australian listed entity providing investors with exposure to a diversified portfolio of high-quality, efficient, Australian farms

Duxton Farms is an Australian listed entity providing investors with exposure to a diversified portfolio of high-quality, efficient, Australian farms. Australia presents a unique investment opportunity in this space because of the low-sovereign risk and potential for value uplift. To ultimately decide on Australia as the location for this Company, Duxton Capital Australia, being the Investment Manager, looked at some of the world’s largest wheat producers, who in aggregate, produce around 520 million tonnes of wheat each year.

Using various different measures of economic and sovereign risk, we narrowed the list down:

The USA

Canada

France

Germany

And Australia

Using Savills’s 2018 global farmland index data, we then analysed these and other countries, and compared them in terms of the capital cost of gaining farmland exposure in these countries. Let’s say you have $100 million US dollars to invest.

For this, you could buy…

9,799 hectares in America

4,286 hectares in New Zealand

3,533 hectares in Germany

4,150 hectares in the UK

and an incredible 43,403 hectares in Australia

Land in Australia is incredibly well priced, but is it comparatively productive? 

We assessed this by benchmarking the capital cost required, to purchase enough land, to produce the same 1 tonne of wheat, year-on-year.

To do this, it would cost you…

$3,305 US in America

$2,978 US in the UK

$3,595 US in Germany

$2,607 US in New Zealand

But only $1,329 US in Australia

You can see why we saw opportunity to farm in Australia given the low sovereign risk, and the mis-priced land. Now the next question is do higher operating margins outside Australia justify higher land values – the short answer according to a 5-year study conducted by the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

So, you have invested your $100 million US and bought land in these, each of which provides a different level of production. Your $100 million deployed into Australian farmland based on average production will produce approximately 85,000 tonne year-in, year-out.

In Germany, your $100m converts to 28 thousand tonnes. In New Zealand, your $100m converts to 38 thousand tonnes. In the UK and the US, your $100m converts to 33 and 31 thousand tonnes respectively.

Now using the data from the GRDC study we have multiplied this by local average farmgate prices per tonne, to calculate revenue per annum, and by average cost of production per tonne, to ultimately arrive at an annual operating profit. In Germany, your $100m should convert to approximately $2.1 million of annual operating profit. In America, its only $2.2 million. In the UK, it is about the same, at $2.5 million.

Whereas in Australia, you $100 million US dollar capital investment converts to a year-on-year operating profit of around $6.2 million, assuming average prices and costs.

The Company therefore recognises potential for capital growth in the underlying land assets of the aggregations. Based on historical data, we also believe grain prices are at the bottom of the cycle, sitting near all-time low inflation adjusted prices. There are a number of catalysts which are anticipated to provide strong upward pressure on the commodities produced by Duxton Farms and teamed with potential up-lift in local land values, this should result in stronger returns for investors over time.