"Our business and advisory experience covers a range
of industries and solutions."

Our business and advisory experience covers a range of industries and solutions.

Whilst many of our mandates and work with Boards remains private, some projects are in the public arena.

As an insight into how Pendulum applies its expertise to its work, following is an overview of our work in one industry – Agriculture – including dairy, beef, wine, water and broadacre farming.

In 2005 Pendulum, advising the ANZ Bank on wine company debt exposures, oversaw the restructure and acquisition of Margaret River’s largest selling wine brand, Evans & Tate, by McWilliam’s Wines.

In 2006 Pendulum took an advisory and mentoring role with the family-owned dairy and juice operation, Harvey Fresh, and assisted in developing its growth strategy that saw the company more than double in size over the next seven years to become the pre-eminent player in its markets. During that time, Pendulum oversaw Harvey Fresh’s corporate restructure, coordinated its purchase of Challenge Dairy assets (in Capel, WA) and the Nugan juice business (in Griffith, NSW), restructured its banking relationships and arranged funding facilities enabling major plant expansions. Subsequently, as family circumstances changed, we worked with the shareholders to evaluate opportunities to realise on their investment and maximise the value of the business. Ultimately, in 2014 Pendulum initiated and negotiated the sale of Harvey Fresh to multi-national dairy organisation Parmalat.

In this period, together with major industry participants, Pendulum started working on plans to expand the WA dairy industry for export which included Pendulum undertaking numerous development trips across Asia meeting major potential buyers of dairy products, as well as beef, wine and other WA products. In 2011 Pendulum managed the acquisition of WA’s largest dairy processor, Brownes Dairy, for Archer Capital.

In 2014 Pendulum privately negotiated and handled the transaction to acquire the major beef processor Harvey Beef for Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Group, with a further engagement to advise on Harvey Beef’s plant upgrade and marketing strategy.

Pendulum’s work in the dairy and beef sectors reinforced our views on the growing importance of water as a resource and led to the establishment of Aqua Ferre, a specialist water company jointly owned by Pendulum, which is now developing water projects for irrigation in WA’s south west and for residential and industrial users north of Perth.

In 2015 Pendulum established and seed-funded Collie Water to lead an industry consortium to develop a solution to the rising salinity in Wellington Dam, the largest reservoir in WA’s south west. Through Pendulum’s work, Collie Water was awarded $175 million in Federal and State funding to further this major regional project. This followed assessment by Infrastructure Australia, which listed the project as among the 12 most critical infrastructure projects in Australia (at the time it was the only WA listed project and the only water project nationally).

In 2016 Pendulum developed a land management business to acquire and rehabilitate pine plantation properties coming to the end of their production cycle. Between 2016 and 2020 Pendulum successfully undertook the acquisition and remediation of a number of properties for development as farm land. In parallel Pendulum assisted the State’s Forest Products Commission with its reforestation and timber plantation objectives.

In 2020, despite the challenges that Covid-19 presented, Pendulum successfully managed the construction of a water treatment plant to supply drinking water to a new residential development north of Perth. Subsequently, the supply network was extended to service a new industrial estate in the area.

Over the past two decades Pendulum’s extensive work in the wine sector across Australia has led it to becoming the industry’s leading corporate advisor. During this time Pendulum has undertaken numerous transactions, including both buy-side and sell-side advice and completed countless vineyard and asset assessments, due diligence reviews and investigations. Pendulum has assisted banks manage their debt exposures, has helped emerging wineries and majors with growth strategies, provided marketing and brand expertise, advised on company restructures, helped family businesses transition or realise on their investments, overseen vineyard acquisitions and new plantings, and much more.

In 2021 Alterra Limited, an ASX listed agricultural land and water assets developer, engaged Pendulum to project manage the planting program for the company’s flagship avocado project. Once developed the project will cover a 200-hectare avocado orchard and will be one of the biggest standalone avocado projects in Australia. Pendulum also assisted Alterra’s funding requirements with significant investment capital.

In 2022 Pendulum established an agricultural investment arm, PenAgri Group, to develop a ‘paddock to plate’ vertically integrated food business – from ownership of large-scale farming operations, to merchandising of grains and pulses, development of an industrial scale plant protein facility, and carbon sequestration. PenAgri currently owns several extensive farm aggregations totalling over 108,000 hectares across 12 farms, representing one of the largest mixed-cropping and livestock landholdings in Western Australia. Plans to construct Australia’s first industrial scale textured plant protein facility to supply local and Asian markets are well underway.

Pendulum is always on the lookout for new opportunities and to help client’s grow. Below are just some of the client’s we have helped and projects we’ve undertaken. To unlock the potential in your businesses, please get in touch to discuss your requirements.