Mick and Ben Hewitt lead organic meat enterprise with funding from Canadian pension board

The Hewitt empire includes land in Queensland, the NT and Victoria. (ABC Landline: Kristy O’Brien)

Being in charge of Hewitt, the largest organic meat company in Australia and the world’s largest organic cattle station, Mick and Ben Hewitt often do business in boardrooms and high-rise buildings around the world.

But watching the pair saddle up horses and joke with young stockmen and women, it is clear the brothers are truly content in the dust and dirt of central Australia.

Self-confessed wild bush kids, the Hewitt boys grew up in central Queensland with big dreams which they have worked together to turn into reality.

They now oversee 2.2 million hectares of land across the nation, from sheep and cattle stations to piggeries, running 200,000 head of livestock across more than 20 major aggregations.

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Ben, who is Hewitt’s agribusiness chief executive, said they didn’t necessarily set out to be the biggest or the boldest.

“It was just to buy the right assets and then let the journey take itself along,” he said.

The Hewitt empire stretches from the Red Centre to Julia Creek, and to the western districts of Victoria.

It includes the largest organically-certified land parcel in the world — four properties named Narwietooma, Glen Helen, Derwent, and Napperby, which are all in the Northern Territory.

Parents Colin and Linda handed the Hewitt company to their sons in 2014, at which point the ambitious brothers really began to spread their wings.

Mick, who is Hewitt group chief executive and managing director, said he and his brother worked on large cattle stations and saw what scale delivered in terms of opportunity.

“That kind of got the creative cogs churning and then it was a case of actually how to get about doing that,” Mick said.

Funding alternative

The brothers decided borrowing from banks was not a model they wanted to pursue.

“The traditional debt-funded family model didn’t seem to be really the root,” Mick said.

“It was somewhat limiting, and so then we started to just think a bit bigger.”

They started searching for strategic partners to invest, and an answer came in 2015 in the form of a Canadian handshake.

Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board was looking to partner up and invest in agriculture.

It managed the superannuation of Canadian government workers, including the mounted police and armed services.

“It certainly wasn’t luck of the draw or we certainly didn’t get stumbled across,” Ben said.

“It was quite a concerted effort to find someone who would partner with us and provide the strategic support, I suppose, and the financial support for us to be able to take advantage of those opportunities that we could see.”

The move also set an important precedent in Australia.

“We were one of the first, if not the first, platform that established that way in Australia, really that private and institutional wealth partnering,” Mick said.

“We’re hopeful that one of our legacies will be that we paved the way for other families to explore that and maximise that type of investment structure.”

The Canadian group has gone on to spend $4 billion on agricultural assets globally and is now one of the largest farm landowners and investors in Australian agriculture.

The Hewitts rejected criticism of foreign land ownership and say capital diversity is critical.

“There’s all manner of ways to raise capital to grow a business,” Mick said.

“It’s naive to suggest anything other, and so I don’t really focus on where the capital came from.

“I focus on what the capital contributes to my communities I work within, to our overall economy and to the people who work in our business.

“That is what capital should do, capital of whatever form — provided it comes from high-integrity sources — should be able to deliver great prosperity to communities across Australia.”

Organic focus

Mick said it was a space that needed to transition from a cottage industry to a legitimate one.

“Having the scale or the emerging scale that we had … I just really identified it as something that was worthwhile pursuing,” he said.

Love of the outback lifestyle is shared right throughout the company, from managers to those out mustering cattle, such as Narwietooma station hand Amber Smith.

She said she loved working in the different landscapes.

Meanwhile, assistant station manager Ed Gibson said he enjoyed seeing the animals happy and healthy.

“You have those little moments where you are really proud of what you do and who you do it with,” he said.

Mick said his dream was to create an iconic business that contributed to rural communities as well as the broader economy.

“I want to have impact and I want to have impact that can actually be seen around the world, not just here in Australia,” he said.