Australian shares are slipping at lunch, with the ASX 200 Index down 0.7 per cent following weaker commodity prices and the biggest tumble since early January in the US overnight. The ASX 200 was down by more than 1.2 per cent earlier in the day. IN PHOTO
Australian shares are slipping at lunch, with the ASX 200 Index down 0.7 per cent following weaker commodity prices and the biggest tumble since early January in the US overnight. The ASX 200 was down by more than 1.2 per cent earlier in the day. IN PHOTO: Australian shares are slipping for the third time this week with the ASX 200 Index down 0.4 per cent at lunch. Revisions to China’s growth targets for the year ahead has been a drag on the mining sector in early trade. A television journalist looks at a display board shortly after the local market opened at the Australian Stock Exchange in Sydney August 5, 2011. Australian stocks sank over 4 percent in opening trade on Friday, after worries about European sovereign debt and weakness in the U.S. economy hammered stock markets from Europe to Wall Street. Reuters/Tim Wimborne

Brett Blundy needs no great introduction. He is Australia’s leading entrepreneur and a millionaire of repute who made big in the retail industry. The 53-year old founder of BB Retail Capital made both money and fame from this retail chain comprising six brands, spread in 850 stores covering fashion, jewellery, lingerie, homewares and accessories. BB Retail has foot print in 13 countries.

Co-founder of BridgeClimb

Blundy is equally popular as the co-investor of BridgeClimb, the top tourism asset of Australia, which takes people climbing to the top of Sydney Harbour’s iconic bridge. Bloomberg introduces Blundy through his most popular brand as the founding investor of retail chain Diva and Brazin Group that has a major focus on Music.

Blundy started on a modest note and climbed the ladder of success, starting with the purchase of a music store in 1980s. Today his $835million business empire is spread across a wide range of investments in the retail sector. In 2013, he shifted his head office to Singapore, where his brands Diva and Lovisa, are well known.

Diversification To Beef Exports

Blundy’s new interest is food sector and has diversified into beef breeding since 2010 and entered the exports market in a big way, targeting Asian countries such as China, Indonesia and Vietnam. In this line, his business vision seeks to leverage Australia’s proximity to Asia by tapping business opportunities in red meat exports to burgeoning Asian economies. Blundy sees the rising affluence of many Asian countries as an opportunity for Northern Australia to feed the demand for beef that takes care of the protein content in food.

He told ABC News, “I've been travelling to China and Asia for a long while and it occurred to me that China and consequently the rest of Asia will not be able to feed itself as their economies grow.” In a strategic move, Blundy has been adding more cattle stations in the last few years. He bought a big stake in many Northern Territory cattle stations, with the prominent one being Amungee Mungee, 600 kilometres south of Darwin. Blundy owns two more cattle stations – OT Downs and Mungabroom – in that region. In the beef breeding sector, Blundy pursues own style by investing money for full-fledged development of properties by way of irrigation.

Pastoral Partnership

In what is being called a “pastoral partnership,” his project at once-dry Beetaloo Station got watering points installed across the property. Using troughs and tanks the 1 million-hectare property got a face lift for optimum utilisation of pasture. With easy access to water at every corner of the property, a phenomenal increase in productivity came through and Beetaloo's Brahman herd grew in strength from 20,000 head to 80,000.

With investment in water yielding faster returns, Blundy is now encouraged to replicate such experiments in similar projects and has already done at Amungee Mungee farm, on a bigger scale with polythene pipes crisscrossing hundreds of kilometres, carrying bore water to a series of stock troughs in the property.

Leveraging Asia

Sounding upbeat on the new diversification into beef exports, Blundy affirms, “I think the world and Australia is waking up to the value of having Asia so close to us and that's a huge advantage. That will drive the north to much greater heights, so I think it's a very good place to be."

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