The Statham family, which holds large tracts of grazing and cropping land in northern NSW under the Sundown Pastoral Company banner, is building the capacity to produce more than 70,000 head of finished steers and heifers annually as part of a 52-week-a-year supply chain in an alliance with commercial cattle breeders.

Since the Sundown business was launched in 1964 by chairman, Neil Statham – a boilermaker who forged the prefabricated shed company, Ranbuild – the farming enterprise has been steadily evolving to encompass grazing, lot feeding and irrigated cropping ventures.

Sundown Pastoral Company, now directed by Mr Statham’s son, David, already turns off 15,000 head of feedlot finished cattle annually.

More importantly, Sundown holds more than 30,000 hectares of highly productive pastures in its New England aggregation.

David Statham has developed a goal to fully utilise these pastures, arming Sundown with the capacity to produce beef of the highest quality in vast quantities.

Instead of tying up grazing land under breeding cows Mr Statham said his goal could be best achieved in alliance with some of Australia’s best commercial cattle breeders.

He said this was the most productive way to supply exporters and domestic supermarket chains; with a steady input of weaned steers and heifers between 240 and 320 kilograms from alliance members.

Steers and heifers will be run across the Sundown aggregation between Kingstown and Inverell (“Newstead”, “Paradise”, “Woombi”, and “Sundown Valley”) all within a 75-kilometre radius, minimising transport losses.

“We’re growing dairy quality pastures on a Queensland cattle station scale,” he said.

There’s also an additional 6000ha of grazing country within the family’s significant cotton property, “Keytah”, at Moree, which also has the capacity to produce 140,000 tonnes of cereals annually.