Investment

Are you considering an investment in WA’s dairy industry? Do you need timely publicly available information on your existing farm?

Generate overlay maps and access information on:

● Infrastructure and physical data including
● water draw down points and details
● roads
● three phase power
● temperature heat indices
● topography

● Socioeconomic data including
● property details
● land values
● community facilities

and so much more: See the find your farm website http://spatial.agric.wa.gov.au/findyourfarm/

Investment in dairy farming in Western Australia can be in a variety of ways.

These include:

Purchase of existing farms by families or groups of investors,
Share farming agreements
Development of equity partnerships with existing farmers or processors.

Buying a dairy farm

Conceptual development budgets and studies are available from the following links.

One study is for a dryland system Dairying North of Perth Western Australia

The other is for a centre pivot irrigation system South of Perth.
Bassendean-sands-dairy-study-part-1-2008

Bassendean-sands-cp-study-part-2-2008

Dairy operators need to comply with statutory requirements of both State and local government authorities including:
Initial siting of the dairy
Waste management and disposal
Identification of stock
Welfare and transport of stock
Welfare of employees.

The steps required before and dairy can be established include the following:

The capital cost of establishing a new dairy in WA is low in comparison to other dairy areas of the world. The cost of establishing a 1,000 cow dairy farm ranges between $8,000-$11,000/cow or less than $25/kg MS. This is very competitive with New Zealand, which has capital costs of around $35/kg MS (excluding co-operative shares).

The table below shows an example of development costs to establish 1,000 cow dairy farms based on centre pivot irrigation in WA.

Source: Primary Consulting (2007).

Some 30-45% of the cost of establishing a new dairy farm is associated with land and 10-20% with cattle.

A Year-In-Year Out budget for one of these regions (Scott River) is presented below assuming an average milk price of 32 c/L or $4.51 kg MS (Note: Milk prices for 2007/8 are 20-30% higher than the average used in this example

As the price of milk has increased over the last 3 years and varies according to processor, the impact of milk prices on margin is demonstrated below.