Andrew Forrest Buys Up Australia
One of Australia’s richest people, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, is splashing cash in the Pilbara and is said to have bought 7300 square kilometres of land. The huge area, about six times the size of New York City, triples the mining magnate’s landholdings making him one of the biggest individual landowners in Western Australia.
According to The Australian, the sale of two Pilbara cattle stations from the collapsed empire of former tycoon Ric Stowe took place a year ago, but the buyer has remained anonymous until recently.
Stowe’s mining company Griffin Coal collapsed in 2010 and, according to the Australian, it’s believed Stowe’s company WR Carpenter Agriculture was in financial trouble at the time of sale.
Sources say his acquisition of the Nanutarra and Uaroo leases near Onslow could be a sign he wants to become a major player in the beef export industry. His expansion may also mean a bid to control access to land for exploration, development of infrastructure and future mining activities.
And controlling access to land is not unfamiliar to Forrest, who has tried multiple times to stop fellow miners from entering his Minderro station. He lodged objections to Cauldron Energy undertaking exploration work at Minderoo, and just last month a Perth magistrate ruled that Cauldron lacked the financial capacity to do so.
However, Onslow Resources was granted conditional approval to mine for mineral sands at the station, so the results have been mixed.
Forrest’s Minderro station runs more than 3000 head of cattle, and his new properties, which lie adjacent to the property, have a herd capacity of 7600 cattle. Minderoo was in the Forrest family’s hands for about 120 years until his father was forced to sell it in 1998. The mining magnate bought back the property in 2009 for $12 million.
But it’s not all mining and minerals.
Forrest made headlines in October last year when he made a $65 million gift to The University of Western Australia. It was reported as one of the biggest single philanthropic gifts in Australian history.
The money will be used to create a Forrest Trust for scholarships and doctoral studies, as well as Forrest House, a residential college for the best academic minds from across the globe.
Forrest also became the first Australian billionaire to sign up to a pledge organised by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates that will see him give at least half of everything he owns to charity.
For now though, he’s sitting pretty comfortably, ranked ninth on BRW’s Australian rich list with a net worth of $3.66 billion.
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So he's a miner and a beef producer?
