How is Southern Ag Grain going to be different to other co-operatives?
Southern Ag Grain will be an unlisted public company, not a co -op. Southern Ag Grain will be a joint venture with a professional grain marketing company who have considerable experience in running grain businesses including marketing, payments, risk management and accounting. It will not be an organisation run by farmers but will have farmer representatives who will know what is happening and have oversight of operations Southern Ag Grain will utilise a model that Emerald has successfully used with two other joint ventures. There will be a $1million in capital backing this project and will grow to $2 million over the initial years. Government rules and regulations for unlisted public companies are much stronger than those for co – operatives. Emerald has successfully run, and still runs, joint ventures like this before.
