Succession stories

Selling as successful succession

After more than thirty years, the Egan family handed Greenlea to ANZCO with its name and its people intact

Peter Egan founded Greenlea on the edge of Hamilton in 1993, when other meat plants were failing. In June 2026 his family announced the sale to ANZCO, with the Greenlea brand staying and Tony Egan still on the board.

Peter Egan got his start in the meat industry in the 1960s, working in his family's butcher shop in Gisborne, on New Zealand's east coast. In 1993 he founded Greenlea and built its first plant on the edge of Hamilton, in the Waikato. One of his managers later described it as "quite a tough time to be opening a meat plant", with other plants in the industry failing around him.

The Hamilton plant started out processing 160 animals a day. In 1997 the family bought a second plant at Morrinsville, and Greenlea kept growing from there. It became New Zealand's fourth-largest beef exporter, sending grass-fed beef to more than 40 countries and employing more than 500 people.

By 2021 the next generation was running it. Peter's son James chaired the board, and Peter's nephew Tony Egan was managing director. Greenlea described itself as a business with a "strong family culture".

In June 2026 the Egan family announced that Greenlea would be sold to ANZCO, the Christchurch-based meat exporter owned by Japan's Itoham Yonekyu. The sale was reported at about $800 million. Tony said securing the business's long-term success and growth had been "a key priority in succession planning", and called ANZCO "a trusted entity with a long track-record of investing in its businesses and in New Zealand". The Commerce Commission cleared the deal in August, and ANZCO said all the regulatory approvals were in by 11 September.

The family made sure the things that mattered to the business travelled with it. "Importantly, the Greenlea brand will remain," Tony said. Greenlea carries on as a stand-alone business, with its agreements with employees, farmers and customers maintained, and the Greenlea Foundation Trust continues its community support. Tony continues to sit on the board and advise the business.

The Egans did not leave the handover to chance. The sale was announced in June, the approvals were done by September, and the man who ran Greenlea is still in the room. That is what a handover with a timetable looks like, and it is the reason a business of that size could change hands without losing what the family built.

Peter Egan learned the trade in a Gisborne butcher shop. More than thirty years after he founded Greenlea, it still carries the name he gave it, and a member of the family still sits on its board.

Further readingANZCO FoodsGreenlea Premier MeatsFarmers Weekly

Selling as successful succession

Janai Brengman joined her father at Murray Street Vineyards in 2014. In October 2026 they passed the Barossa winery to the Oatley family

An American investment banker and a Barossa winemaker founded Murray Street Vineyards at Greenock in 2001. It became fully family-owned in 2014, and in October 2026 it passed to Sandy Oatley and his daughter Nicky.

Murray Street Vineyards began in 2001, when William (Bill) Jahnke, an American investment banker, and Barossa winemaker Andrew Seppelt founded it at Greenock, in South Australia's Barossa Valley. The winery on the estate was completed in 2007, in time for vintage, and the company says the Greenock grown wines from that vintage "gave testimony of great Murray Street estate wines to come". The company describes the winery as having a "hilltop five peaked silhouette", with a courtyard "flanked on two sides by 34 open-air temperature-controlled fermentation tanks".

Its stated commitment is "simply to craft exceptional wines from 100% estate grown fruit." The flagship is the Murray Street Va de Vi.

In 2014 the business became fully family-owned, when Janai Brengman joined her father as co-owner. Its head winemaker, Ben Perkins, is also listed as a director.

In July 2025 the estate was offered for sale through an agent. In October 2026 the family sold the winery, the Murray Street brand, the cellar door and the vineyards to Sandy Oatley and his daughter Nicky, of A.G. Oatley Wines. Sandy is the owner and executive chairman of the company, and the son of Bob Oatley, who founded Rosemount Estate.

Janai Brengman's words about the sale were about what the family had built. "Building Murray Street Vineyards has been a passion for our family," she said. "We are incredibly proud of the wines and community we have built over the past 25 years, and we are confident the Oatley family will guide the brand into its next exciting chapter."

Sandy Oatley said his family was "honoured to be its next custodians". "As a family business ourselves, we share the values that have shaped Murray Street," he said, "and we look forward to building on the legacy Bill and Janai have created."

Murray Street went from one father and daughter to another, and it went whole. The winery, the brand, the cellar door and the vineyards were sold together, so the business the family built stayed in one piece. Janai's own count is 25 years of wines and community, and both have passed to a family that calls itself a family business too.

Further readingOatley Fine Wine MerchantsAustralia's Wine Business MagazineMurray Street Vineyards

The right external custodian

Laurie Dyson started a bus business in 1952 to give his family work. Seventy-four years later it employed nearly 1,200 people

Dysons began in Melbourne's north with a small fleet that ran flat out only on Sundays. In October 2026 the Dyson and Deacon families passed it to Kinetic after three generations of family leadership.

Laurie Dyson came to Australia from England at 18, served in the Second World War and, in 1952, started a bus business in Melbourne's north. His grandson Shane Dyson says the whole small fleet was out on only one day a week: Sunday, visiting day, running from the East Preston tram terminus up to the hospitals at Bundoora.

Laurie's aim, Shane says, was "to create employment through the family". He would walk into the drivers' room and say, "there's a lot of mouths to feed in here."

Shane started cleaning buses at 13 and was driving them around the yard at 14. He joined the office at 16 and was running operations by about 20. Dysons spread from Reservoir and East Preston across the northern and eastern suburbs, and Shane and two of his cousins became its joint managing directors. At one stage, he says, 16 of the third generation and about 14 of the fourth were working in the business. Most of the businesses Dysons bought, he says, came to them because their owners wanted a family company that would look after their people.

The family handed over the running of Dysons in steps. In 2022 Andrew Jakab became the first chief executive from outside the family, after a search of about a year. By the end of 2023 the three joint managing directors had moved to the board.

In May 2026 Dysons announced an agreement for Kinetic to acquire the whole business, and ownership passed to Kinetic on 2 October. By then Dysons had nearly 1,200 staff, more than 600 buses and 12 depots across Victoria and New South Wales. Shane said the board and directors decided Kinetic's offer for the whole business was the way to go. "Bittersweet" was his word for it. "We're very proud of the history," he said, and he thinks his grandfather "would be pretty proud of what we achieved in that time."

The family's own message on the day was short: "From the entire Dyson and Deacon family, thank you for being part of our story."

The Dysons did not hand the business over in one move. They brought in an outside chief executive first, moved the family to the board next, and made the decision about ownership after that. Laurie wanted work for his family, and 74 years on, nearly 1,200 people had it.

Further readingDysonsBus NewsDysons history

The right external custodian

More than sixty years after Pat and Marie Nolan opened a Gympie butcher shop, their sons chose who would carry Nolan Meats on

Pat and Marie Nolan opened a butcher shop in Gympie in 1958 and bought a small abattoir in 1964. In May 2026 the family agreed to sell Nolan Meats to Hewitt, after turning down offers from Singapore, China and America.

Pat and Marie Nolan opened a retail butchery in Gympie, in south-east Queensland, in 1958. They set out to give the town good meat and quickly built a reputation for it. In 1964 they bought a small country abattoir to go with the shop, so they could have more say over the quality of what they sold.

The business kept moving back along the chain. They added cattle, began wholesaling to other butchers around Gympie, and later built feedlots and modernised the meat processing. Between 1976 and 1980 their three sons, Michael, Tony and Terry, joined the business. Terry Nolan describes the years from 2001 to 2026 as the brothers' chapter, in which they "more than quadrupled the business".

Nolan Meats now breeds, feeds and processes cattle on one chain, from farms and the Cinnabar feedlot to an export-accredited meatworks outside Gympie. It processes about 150,000 cattle a year and employs 621 people, which makes it the region's largest private employer. About half of those people came through the Pacific Labour Scheme.

In May 2026 the Nolan family agreed to sell to Hewitt, an organic meat producer led by brothers Mick and Ben Hewitt. They had turned down offers from Singapore, China and America to get there. "It's been brewing for a while," Terry said, "and we've had a little bit of illness in the family that has weighed into the sale."

What they wanted, he said, was a buyer who would look after the family's name: "We wanted to sell to a company that wanted to respect the Nolan family legacy, and that's been weighed heavily." Terry will join Hewitt's board during the transition, and Nolan Meats will keep operating from its Gympie site. The agreement was expected to complete in the second half of 2026.

A business that took two generations of one family to build is not handed over in a day, and the board seat gives the handover a Nolan in the room while it happens. Terry's own account of the three chapters runs from Pat and Marie, to the brothers, to Hewitt.

The shop Pat and Marie opened in 1958 earned its name for "high quality meats served with a smile". Their sons have now chosen who carries that name on, and said plainly what mattered to them in the choice.

Tony Nolan, one of the three brothers, passed away in May 2026. Vale Tony.

Further readingNolan MeatsABC RuralBeef Central

Selling as successful succession

Crown Coaches began with one Melbourne bus route and a family's life savings. In 2026 the Haousts chose a larger home for it

Victor Haoust senior and his wife bought route 608 in January 1967. In 2026 their grandchildren agreed to join Ventura, with the Crown name kept and every employee offered a job.

Victor Haoust senior and his wife started Hawthorn Bus Service in Melbourne in January 1967. They bought route 608 with their life savings. Their son Victor, then 21, came home from New Zealand to help. His father passed away in 1968, and at 22 he was running the business.

He kept building. Two-way radios came in 1971. In 1987 the company put a wheelchair-lift bus on the road, bought route services from Ventura, and took the name Crown Coaches. A depot at East Burwood followed in 1989, and another at Nunawading in 2005. By 2017, when the business marked fifty years, it ran 141 vehicles with about 250 staff. Asked for the secret, Victor said: "The secret is to have good managers, and have good people around you." His children Jerome and Renee were by then executive officers.

In 2024 the family began exploring a sale. Renee Haoust said: "This decision is not made lightly, but with a firm belief that it is the right path forward for the company, our employees and our clients." Jerome said the family understood the significance of the decision and were committed to a smooth transition that respects the interests of all parties. The pressure behind it was practical: the investment needed to electrify a bus fleet.

In February 2026 the family agreed to join Ventura, whose chief executive is Carol-Anne Nelson. About 150 buses, ten of them electric, and 267 employees were part of the deal, and all employees were offered jobs. The Crown brand stays. The competition regulator approved the acquisition in May 2026. Renee described the partnership as one that "enhances Crown's ability to deliver safe, reliable, customer-focused transport, backed by the resources of a larger network." Completion had not been confirmed when this was written.

A family that started with one route and its savings has handed over a fleet of about 150 buses, a depot network and a workforce that keeps its jobs. The choice they described was the one that served the company, its people and its customers.

Further readingBus NewsBus News

Selling as successful succession

Fifty years after Tom Hartley cut his first bar with a hand hacksaw, the Hartley family sold Hilton Manufacturing to an owner who keeps the name on the door

Tom and Margo Hartley started Hilton Manufacturing in a tin shed in Melbourne's south-east in 1976. Their son Todd has run it since the late 2000s. In June 2026 the family sold the 250-person truck fuel tank maker to Australian industrial group Aldus.

Tom Hartley arrived in Melbourne from Leeds in 1956 as a third-year apprentice toolmaker and lived with his parents in a housing commission house in Doveton until he married. He met Margo through the youth group at St James Anglican Church in Dandenong, and the two of them worked their way from rented rooms in Springvale to a house they built in Hallam.

In 1976, after being retrenched twice, Tom decided that if he was going to work that hard he might as well work for himself. Four mates put in a thousand dollars each and Hilton Manufacturing began in a little tin shed. He remembered spending the first night cutting through a five-inch bar with a hand hacksaw, then scraping together a hundred and twenty dollars the next day for a power hacksaw. The early work was farm gates and small water tanks, then quick turnaround parts for the truck plant across the road.

Hilton grew into a maker of fuel tanks for truck brands from Kenworth to Volvo, and an exporter as far away as Sweden. It outgrew the shed and two more factories, came through two recessions, and around 2007 moved into a 20,000 square metre plant in Dandenong South. A second plant in Brisbane followed. Margo was at the factory most days. Tom joined the Victorian Manufacturing Hall of Fame's honour roll in 2014 and received an OAM in 2017.

The first handover happened on the day the new plant opened. Tom announced his resignation, having tried outside general managers and found none of them as good as his son Todd. He kept coming in every weekday to mentor, but the running of Hilton was Todd's. Tom passed away in August 2017, at 80. Two years later Todd hosted an honour service for 51 past and present staff with fifteen or twenty-five years each, more than eleven hundred years between them.

In June 2026 the family sold Hilton Manufacturing to Aldus, an Australian-owned industrial group. Aldus called Hilton "a fantastic family-owned business" and lists it among its brands, each of which it says operates independently under its own name. Todd Hartley's account of the decision is about the choice of owner rather than the sale: "As a family-owned business, it was important to us that any new owner shared our values and long-term direction. Aldus shares our belief in Australian manufacturing and is prepared to invest in its future."

Tom Hartley did the hard part of succession nearly twenty years before anyone bought the company. He tested outsiders in the top job, chose the person who did it best, and then stepped far enough back that the business learned to run without him. By the time the Hartleys decided to sell, Hilton had 250 people, a second generation at the helm and a workforce with decades of service: a business that could be handed on. The tin shed is long gone. The name Tom and Margo put on it is still on the door.

Further readingSprinterTom Hartley in 2014About

The right external custodian

Sixty years after the Hassetts bought a Newtown corner pub, Marie Hassett's family passed the Carlisle Castle to another family of publicans

The Hassett family bought the Carlisle Castle Hotel in the mid-1960s and ran it themselves for more than forty years. In April 2026, with Marie Hassett at 92, they sold the freehold to Universal Hotels, the Kospetas family's Sydney pub group, which has put hands-on operators behind the bar.

The Carlisle Castle Hotel has stood on the corner of Albermarle and Probert Streets in Newtown since 1876, a few blocks back from King Street. Resch's refitted it in the early 1920s and brought in a marble bar from Italy, and the brewery's lion is still on the roof. The Hassett family bought the pub in the mid-1960s and made it theirs. Marie Hassett ran it until 1985.

Her son Anthony and his wife Sue took it on after her and ran it until 2009. That year the family sold the leasehold to the Surfside Hotels group and kept the building, and from then on the Hassetts were the pub's landlords rather than its publicans. The Castle traded on as an unrenovated, old-school local in a suburb that gentrified around it. Two years ago Marie celebrated her 90th birthday in the pub, in the family's 58th year of owning it.

In July 2025 the family put the freehold on the market. The campaign took about ten months and drew enquiry from local and interstate buyers; the selling agents called the pub "a generational opportunity" and said being entrusted with a hotel "held in the same family for over 60 years was a privilege". Marie was 92 when the sale went through at the end of April 2026.

The buyer was Universal Hotels, the Sydney pub group Jim Kospetas founded in 1998. Its chief executive is Harris Kospetas, and it has about fifteen venues across the city. Universal did not take over the bar itself. "When the Carlisle Castle opportunity was presented to the market, we discussed it with the Bat & Ball team and made a collective decision to purchase the freehold and lease the business to them," Harris Kospetas said. The plan, in his words, is "keeping it local and true to Newtown".

The Bat & Ball team, the five operators who revived that Redfern pub, took the keys in early June and did most of the renovation themselves. The marble bar stayed and gained a solid timber top they built by hand over a month, and the pub was open again by early September. "We are custodians of this pub," Dan McBride, one of the five, said, "here to preserve it for many years to come until the next chapter of its life." Fellow operator Dynn Szmulewicz put it as "preserve and protect. Not change for the sake of change."

What the Hassetts did in 2009 shaped what they were able to do in 2026. By stepping back from the bar and keeping the building, they turned a family pub into a business that ran without a Hassett in it, and when Marie's family came to sell there was no one's working life to unpick from the deal, only a landlord to replace. Sixty years after the family bought a corner pub in the back streets of Newtown, the marble bar is still there, and so is the lion.

Further readingMQ & Associates (via The Hotel Conversation)Greek City Timesthe reopening

Ownership vs management succession

Forty years after John Hewison started at home, the Hewisons planned their own handover

John and Helen Hewison founded Hewison & Associates in Melbourne in October 1985 and the firm has never taken a commission. In August 2026 their son Andrew, two years into a transition plan he set in motion himself, brought in a partner and opened ownership to the firm's advisers.

John Hewison did not come to financial advice from finance. He had spent his working life in the corporate world, in senior roles at Brashs, the Melbourne music and electronics chain. What he saw of advisers was people paid by commission on what they sold. In October 1985 he and his wife Helen started Hewison & Associates from home. It charged a fee for its advice, and it has never taken a commission.

The home office became a small one in South Yarra, and South Yarra became an entire floor on St Kilda Road. Hewison Private Wealth now has more than 60 people and looks after almost $3 billion. Andrew Hewison, John's son, joined in the early 2000s as an associate adviser. He took over as managing director in January 2015, with his father as chairman. John retired from the firm as 2020 drew to a close. "My father taught me to always put the client's interests before your own," Andrew said in October 2025, "and I'm proud that principle still defines who we are today."

The next decision was Andrew's. In November 2024 he sat down with the people he most relied on and told them he thought he had about two years of leading the firm left in him. Raising it early, he said, gave the board and shareholders time to build a deliberate transition plan. The board already had an outside chair in Adrian Hondros. The firm built out its executive team and began a search for the next managing director.

In August 2026 the firm brought in Pemba Capital Partners, a Sydney investment firm, as a partner. Pemba described it as a partnership under which it and the existing Hewison shareholders "will broaden ownership of the business to a wider group of Hewison's advisers". Andrew put the choice this way: "After a careful, selective process, we chose Pemba because they understood exactly what makes Hewison different and were drawn to it, not looking to change it." Days later he confirmed that he will step down as managing director at the end of 2026, staying on as a director and shareholder.

What stays is most of what a client would notice. The advisers are the same, and the assets sit in clients' own names as they always have. The firm still takes no commissions, and the name over the door is still Hewison.

The Hewisons treated the second generation's step back from the top job as something to plan years ahead, not something to announce when it happened. A firm that began with one man's conviction at home now has an outside chair, an executive team and ownership spread across the people who sit with its clients. It no longer needs a Hewison running it to stay what John and Helen made it. John's own account of the beginning still holds: "We started from zero and gradually built a client base."

Further readingPemba Capital PartnersFinancial Standard40 years of independence

The right external custodian

Kate McCallum and Tony Clark built a small advice firm on purpose, then chose who would carry it before anyone made them

The co-founders of Multiforte Financial Services went looking for a like-minded independent firm in July 2025. By the end of September they had merged into Lorica Partners, with every staff member and client carried across.

Kate McCallum had spent years in executive roles at banks and fund managers when, in about 2007, she and Tony Clark set up a financial advice firm of their own in Sydney. Clark had run a management consultancy. The client McCallum had in mind was specific. She saw people who were "time poor, had some level of complexity but needed a personal chief financial officer role, someone who could handle the financial side of their world, and provide a system for making good decisions."

Multiforte charged fees for its advice from the first day, at a time when McCallum called that "more unusual than it is today". "I didn't ever want to be in a position that if I don't recommend something, I won't get paid," she said in 2014. The firm grew one client at a time rather than by buying anyone else's book, and it capped itself at 100 clients, shared equally between the two founders. McCallum looked after people still building their wealth and Clark specialised in business owners. By 2025 the firm looked after about $300 million for its clients.

In July 2025, after almost 19 years, the founders went looking for a successor. Nothing had forced the question; Multiforte made the approach itself, and Lorica Partners' Brendon Vade later described the brief: "They wanted to sell to achieve succession for both their clients and their team, and for it to be something they could do on their own terms rather than waiting for some issue and leaving it too late." Lorica understood the question from the inside: it had started in 1983 as one man's practice and had taken its founder's name off the door in 2021 when Nigel Stewart stepped down.

The partnership became official on 30 September 2025. Multiforte's staff moved across to Lorica in the same roles on the same conditions, and clients kept their own advisers, with nothing changing in how their advice was handled for the first year. The combined firm looks after about $1.1 billion, of which roughly $300 million came with Multiforte.

McCallum and Clark are still there, listed on Lorica's team as consultants. The firm's note to its clients put the move in their own voice: "After almost 19 years of caring for our clients' wealth and wellbeing, we're embarking on an exciting new chapter." It ends simply: "Kate, Tony and the team are now at loricapartners.com.au."

A firm built deliberately small carries a particular risk, because the relationships that clients value sit with two people. McCallum and Clark's answer was to go looking early, on their own initiative, for a firm that ran the way they did, and to move the whole practice across intact, advisers included, so that what their clients relied on no longer depended on the two people who had started it. Nineteen years on, the founders are still in the building, and the clients they chose one at a time are still looked after by the people they chose for them.

Further readingLorica PartnersMoney ManagementProfessional Planner

Ownership vs management succession

David Wren built PassMark in Sydney for twenty-eight years. He has sold it, kept a stake, and stayed on to hand it over

He started the benchmarking and diagnostics company in 1998 and shipped its first product in May 1999. In May 2026 he sold the business to Jackson Allan and a group of private investors, who are moving to Sydney to run it.

David Wren started PassMark Software in Sydney in 1998 and put its first product on sale in May 1999. It makes benchmarking and diagnostic tools, the unglamorous software that tells you whether a computer is as fast as it claims to be and whether its memory is about to fail. The company has said of itself, without much ceremony, that it has been profitable and has grown its sales consistently ever since.

Twenty-eight years on, the reach of the thing is out of all proportion to its size. PassMark's PerformanceTest and MemTest86 are used by hundreds of thousands of people. Its free benchmark site cpubenchmark.net holds results from more than a million systems across some three and a half thousand processor types, which the company describes as the largest such database in the world. It is not purely a software house either. From Sydney it also designs and ships physical test gear: loopback plugs, PCIe test cards, power delivery testers. There is a branch office in California. Everything else is here.

A business like that carries a particular kind of risk, and it is not commercial. Twenty-eight years of product knowledge sat with one person, and the value of the company to anyone else depended on how much of it could be moved out of his head and into the business before he stepped back. Wren treated that as the job.

In May 2026 PassMark announced that Jackson Allan, with a group of private investors, had bought the business. Customers were told plainly what would change and what would not. Allan is relocating to Sydney to lead it. "PassMark is a trusted brand that has been built over more than 25 years on technical rigour and quality," he said. "Our priority is to build on that and continue investing in PassMark's products and team."

What did not change is as deliberate as what did. Wren remains a shareholder. He has committed to supporting the transition of ownership and technical leadership through the first year and beyond. Licence keys stay valid, pricing and reseller margins are unchanged, and customers keep the same support contacts. In the same month the ownership changed, the company shipped a new version of MemTest86 and a new line of USB-C loopback plugs. From the outside, nothing paused.

Wren has sold his company and given up running it, and he is still an owner of it and still on hand while what he knows becomes something the company holds rather than something he holds. Selling the business and handing over the knowledge are two different jobs. He gave the second one a year, and the buyer a company that will not need him forever.

Further readingPassMark SoftwarePassMark transition FAQSearch Fund Oz

Next generation choosing differently

Bevan Douglas had never poured a beer when he opened his first Tamworth pub in 1989. Thirty-seven years on, the family have sold the group he started

Bevan and Joan Douglas were running a funeral parlour when they took on a hotel on the southern edge of Tamworth. One pub grew to seven. In 2021 their daughter Tierzah and her husband Craig Power bought the business from the rest of the family, and in March 2026 they agreed to sell the lot.

Before he ran pubs, Bevan Douglas ran a funeral parlour in Tamworth. In 1989 he and his wife Joan opened a hotel on the southern edge of town and gave it the plainest name available: The Pub. "I'd never poured a beer in my life until the day we opened the pub," he said thirty years later.

They took to it anyway, and they divided the work between them in a way that lasted. Joan preferred the jobs behind the scenes and inside the bar. Bevan loved the room. One hotel became four, then seven, spread across Tamworth's southern growth corridor, and by late 2018 the group employed more than four hundred people. That November Bevan was inducted into the Australian Hotels Association's Hall of Fame and given the Cyril Maloney Medal in front of six hundred people in Sydney. When The Pub turned thirty the following year, the two longest-serving staff were honoured alongside the founders: Melanie Malpass, twenty-nine years, and Therese Evans, twenty-eight. Malpass had been there almost since the doors opened.

The family reached its decision point in 2021, and what happened then is the part most accounts skip. "Bevan my father-in-law started the business in 1989," Craig Power said at the time. "The majority of the family wanted to divest, so we purchased the business with Bill and Mario as partners." Power is married to Bevan and Joan's daughter Tierzah. He had known Bill and Mario Gravanis of Sydney's Oscars Hotels for more than twenty years. He rang them first and asked whether they wanted to buy his wife's family business with him. They said yes, and the two couples took it fifty-fifty. Bevan and Joan retired. Tierzah's brother Jarod and his wife Tanika went on to other things.

Five years later the Powers and the Gravanises let it go. In March 2026 they sold the five remaining venues and the brewery to the regional hotel owner IMG, in a deal the trade press put at $160 million. "For us it's about recognising the right time for the business to evolve under new ownership," Power said. Three weeks earlier the group had been publicising its biggest ever Country Music Festival program, more than a hundred and fifty shows across ten days. The family are yet to say whether any Power or Douglas stays on.

What is unusual here is not that a family sold. It is that one couple bought their own family out first. In 2021 Craig and Tierzah Power could have taken the money with everyone else. They took on the business instead, ran it for another five years, and then picked their own moment. The pub Bevan opened without knowing how to pour a beer is still trading on The Ringers Road.

Further readingAustralian HotelierNorthern Daily LeaderPubTIC

The right external custodian

Andrea Mahncke inherited her parents' Mortlake supermarket as a child. Fifty-six years after they bought it, she is handing Bates IGA to the co-op in the next town

Major and Irene Bates bought the shop in 1970, the year their daughter was born. Both passed away young, and Andrea later bought out her brother and sister. In mid-October 2026 the Terang Co-op takes over, with the staff staying on.

Major and Irene Bates bought the supermarket in Officer Street, Mortlake, in Victoria's Western District, in 1970, the year their daughter Andrea was born. For Andrea it was never only a shop. "For as long as I can remember, it's been home to me," she says.

Her father passed away when she was ten and her mother when she was thirteen, both at 45. The business was left to Andrea and her older siblings, Wayne and Sharon. Her brother, then 18, ran it first. Then her uncles arranged for Frank Riordon, from Terang, 25 kilometres down the Hamilton Highway, to take over as manager. "He treated it as his own and steered it in the right direction," Andrea says. "He had my best interests at heart." She trained as an early childhood educator and still works in education, and in time she bought out her brother's and sister's shares. Her husband Ian, whom she met at high school, has worked in the shop for 35 years and has managed it for the last 15. The store trades seven days a week in a town of about 1,400 people, with a deli counter, barbecue chickens and fresh flowers.

Fifty-six years after her parents bought it, Andrea has decided to sell. She does not pretend the decision was easy. "Selling Bates supermarket is incredibly emotional for me," she says. "It is the last real connection I have to my parents." What made it possible was who the buyer is.

The Terang & District Co-operative, known across the district simply as the Co-op, was founded in 1908 by a butter-factory chairman named Martin Brennan and is owned today by about 3,000 local member-shareholders. It runs the supermarket and hardware stores in Terang and employs about 130 people. In mid-October 2026 it takes over the Mortlake supermarket. "It could not have been a better fit," Andrea says. "It's local like us." She says the staff are staying on.

The two towns have been tied together for a long time. A railway joined them from 1890 until 1977, they share a football club, and it was a man from Terang who kept the Bates shop going for three children who had lost both parents. Now the co-operative Terang built is taking on the shop the Bates family built.

The shop is not passing to a third generation of the family, and it is not going to a chain. Andrea has chosen an owner that belongs to the district in the same way her family did. "I have tried very hard to carry on their legacy and honour everything they built," she says of her parents. "I know there will be a lot of tears as I walk out the doors for the final time as the owner of my family business." Later in 2026 she hopes to take a trip in their honour.

Further readingThe StandardMortlake DispatchTerang Co-op

Ownership vs management succession

Rob and Helen Lynch answered a Qantas advertisement for boarding music in 1974. Fifty-two years on, they handed Stellar Entertainment to the three people who run it

A radio announcer and his wife won a contract to supply Qantas with boarding music and built a company that now programs the entertainment on flights around the world. On 31 August 2026 they transferred ownership to Stellar's chief executive, chief financial officer and chief operating officer.

In 1974 Qantas placed an advertisement in a Sydney newspaper. The airline wanted a company to supply boarding music, and Rob Lynch, a radio announcer turned program manager, decided he and his wife Helen could do it. "Back then there was only boarding music, there was nothing else," he recalled years later. "So I put in a quote and we got the job." That contract was the beginning of Stellar Entertainment.

The Lynches opened a studio branch in 1979, and over the decades the boarding-music supplier grew into a business that acquires, licenses and programs films, television and music for airlines, with offices across Asia, Europe and North America. The hard years came in the early 2010s, when a much larger American rival moved into the market and cut prices. Stellar lost four or five clients in a row. "We are a family business, number one, so we don't have stockholders," Rob said in 2017. "We had no bank loans at all. We were debt free when we lost those clients, so we were able to survive." The company says it now entertains more than 30 million passengers a month.

By 2020 the people running Stellar day to day were no longer the Lynches. Sam Allen, more than a decade in the business, became chief executive; Annie Zhong and Daniel Jacobs, there since 2016 and 2017, became CFO and COO. Under them the company expanded its airline partnerships and invested in technology.

On 31 August 2026 the company announced that Rob and Helen had transferred ownership to Allen, Zhong and Jacobs, "completing a carefully planned succession" after more than fifty years at the helm. Stellar continues as an independent company.

Rob's explanation rested on people, not price. "What has remained constant throughout that journey is people," he said. "As we step back from the business, nothing matters more to us than knowing that this ethos lives on. Sam, Annie and DJ understand the business deeply, but more importantly, they understand what Stellar stands for." Sam Allen answered in kind: "Rob and Helen built an incredible business, and it's a privilege to continue that legacy."

Rob and Helen handed Stellar to the people who had been running it for six years and had shown they could. When Qantas renewed in 2024 it was Allen who announced it, in the founders' own key: "Our history with Qantas dates back to 1974 when they became our very first airline client." Fifty-two years after that newspaper advertisement, the airline is still a client, and the business Rob and Helen Lynch started with a quote for boarding music is in the hands of people who learned it from them.

Further readingStellar EntertainmentInflightAviation Business News

Next generation choosing differently

The Turnbulls came to Rockhampton in 1991 to sell the Criterion Hotel, stayed 35 years, and have now sold it themselves

Leigh Turnbull and wife Carolyn came in 1991 to sell The Cri and stayed; four generations have lived there since. Son Ryan, the publican, and wife Megan chose to move on, and sold to a Queensland pub group in September 2026.

In 1991 Leigh Turnbull was a hotel broker living on the Gold Coast. He was invited to come up to Rockhampton, live at the Criterion Hotel for a bit, and then sell it. He brought his wife Carolyn. "We got up here, and mum loved the joint, and here we are," their son Ryan told the ABC in April. The Turnbulls bought the place instead, and thirty-five years later they are still in it.

There is a lot of hotel to love. A pub has stood on the corner since the Bush Inn of the late 1850s, the first in Rockhampton, and the present three-storey building went up in 1889 and 1890 for ten thousand pounds. It has been on the Queensland Heritage Register since 1992. Families have run it for most of its life; the builder's daughter and her husband's family held it until 1946. Menzies, Melba and Bradman stayed here. So, Ryan says, did Wally Lewis and Joe Cocker.

The Turnbulls added to it rather than tidied it away. They opened the 130-seat Bush Inn Bar and Grill, bought the property next door in 2004 and built an 18-room motel on it, and took the bar back to its original ceiling height so the old features could be seen again. Four generations of the family have lived at the hotel across the 35 years. Leigh and Carolyn retired, and Ryan has been the publican since, living on site with his wife Megan. "It's always had that feeling of home," he said. "It's a privilege to look after."

The decision to sell came from that household. Leigh and Carolyn are well into retirement, Ryan and Megan's children are nearing the end of high school, and the couple want to move out of the city. "We thought now is the time to do it, to give the new folks a go at big events and such like," Ryan said, naming Rockynats and beef week in 2027. The family put the hotel to market on 1 May 2026, the first time it had been offered in 35 years.

The buyer is Waymark Hotels, a Brisbane-based group with pubs across regional Queensland, and the ACCC approved the sale on 3 September 2026. The family are yet to announce a settlement date.

Leigh and Carolyn never meant to buy the Criterion. They meant to sell it, and stayed thirty-five years because Carolyn loved the joint. Their son has chosen his moment more deliberately, ahead of the big events he named, so that whoever comes next gets a proper go at them. Selling a pub you live in is not like selling a business you drive home from. The Turnbulls have been at home in this one since 1991, and until settlement Ryan is still the publican.

Further readingABC NewsPubTICCapricorn Enterprise

Ownership vs management succession

Four generations on from Rosario Cordina's Girraween chickens, the family stay owners as their majority partner changes

Joe Cordina's granddaughter Louise leads the business he and his father Rosario started at Girraween in 1945. The family sold control to PAG in 2022 and kept a stake. Under the 2026 merger they remain co-owners and Louise becomes Chair.

Just after the Second World War, Rosario Cordina and his son Joseph were among the Australian producers asked to supply chickens to England. They worked from a block at Girraween, in New South Wales, and when England had recovered in the 1950s they turned to the local market instead. In the family's own words, the business has been under continual expansion from that day. Cordina is still on the same Girraween site it has occupied since 1945.

What grew there over eighty years is a group that farms, processes and exports chicken, under three brands. Joe Cordina passed his legacy on to his granddaughter, Louise, the fourth generation of the family. She has spent thirty years in the industry and leads the group today.

The family's first big decision about ownership came in 2022. They sold Cordina Farms to the private equity firm PAG, in a deal reported at $300 million, and kept a stake alongside their new majority partner. Louise Cordina stayed on as chief executive. With PAG's capital behind it, the group built an A$80 million breeder farm and an A$75 million hatchery and expanded its processing and automation.

On 28 August 2026 PAG signed an agreement to sell that majority stake as part of a merger with TUROSI, the Australian operations of the global food group OSI. The combined business will trade as Cordina OSI and, once the merger completes, will be owned by OSI and the Cordina family, who are staying in as co-owners. Louise Cordina becomes Chair and Anne-Marie Mooney becomes chief executive. The merger is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close by the end of 2026.

Louise Cordina called PAG "exemplary partners to Cordina" who had been "fundamental in positioning Cordina Group for its next chapter of growth", and said the family look forward to building on that foundation as part of Cordina OSI. OSI's president and chief operating officer Mark Richardson described the merger as combining "Cordina's strong local heritage and customer relationships with OSI's global industry expertise". The heritage and the relationships are the family's, built over four generations on the one block.

Twice now a majority partner has come in, and twice the family have stayed owners. What changes at completion is the family's job rather than their name on the business: Louise Cordina moves from running the group to chairing it, and the operating seat passes to a chief executive from outside the family. The Cordinas have treated owning the business and running it as two separate decisions, and they still hold the first one. Rosario and Joseph's chickens left Girraween for England eighty years ago; the family are still there.

Further readingPrimary Agribusiness GroupGrain CentralFarm Weekly

Restructuring to preserve the family

The MacLachlan family are dividing Jumbuck Pastoral among the next generation, and three Kingoonya stations have passed to the Shahin family

Jumbuck Pastoral dates from 1888 and by 2023 spanned 5.2 million hectares. Rather than sell it whole, the family chose to divide it among siblings. In August 2026 Commonwealth Hill, Mobella and Bulgunnia, Jumbuck's since the 1940s, passed to the Shahin family.

Hugh MacLachlan founded Rawlinna in Western Australia in the 1960s. At about a million hectares it was the biggest sheep station in the country, and he later established Madura Plains on the Nullarbor. He was adding to something already old. Jumbuck Pastoral had been in the MacLachlan family since 1888, and the three stations at Kingoonya in South Australia, Commonwealth Hill, Mobella and Bulgunnia, had been Jumbuck country since the 1940s.

By 2023 the family's holdings spanned 5.2 million hectares. The three Kingoonya stations alone ran to 1.29 million hectares and a self-replacing Merino flock. The next generation were in the business: brothers Jock and Callum MacLachlan as joint managing directors, and Hugh's daughters Airlie, Islay and Brooke as directors.

In 2023 the family confirmed how it would all pass on. Jumbuck Pastoral would be divided among siblings "to ensure a sustainable succession plan". Rather than sell the business whole, the family would split its holdings, each part carrying on inside a separate family-controlled enterprise. The brothers left their joint managing director roles that year as part of the plan, and the sisters are expected to expand their roles from being Jumbuck directors. Blina, Glen Devon Gunbar and Mulgathing were to stay in the family. Commonwealth Hill, Mobella and Bulgunnia were earmarked for sale.

In May 2026 the three Kingoonya stations went to market as a going concern, walk in walk out with the flock, and in August their sale to the Shahin family of South Australia was announced. Callum MacLachlan spoke for the family. "Throughout the sale process it was important to us that the aggregation passed to an owner who understood the significance of the assets, respected the work of the people who have managed them and shared our belief in the future of Australian agriculture," he said. "We have come to know Charlie and his family through this process and believe they will be excellent custodians of the aggregation."

The Shahins, who bought Aileron Station in the Northern Territory in 2025, answered in kind. "We are honoured that the MacLachlan family has entrusted us with the responsibility of carrying that legacy forward," Professor Khalil (Charlie) Shahin AO said. Which of the MacLachlan siblings ends up with which of the remaining stations is news the family are yet to share.

A pastoral family selling 1.29 million hectares looks, from a distance, like a retreat. Set against the plan laid out in 2023, it is the plan working. Blina, Glen Devon Gunbar and Mulgathing are still in MacLachlan hands, and the family chose to divide 138 years of country among the next generation rather than sell it whole. Hugh MacLachlan's generation added stations to Jumbuck. His children's generation are dividing them, so that more than one MacLachlan enterprise carries on.

Further readingAuctionsPlusReal Estate Source

Next generation choosing differently

Aroha Jakicevich takes on the wine business her great-grandfather started in Herne Bay, and sells six of Glengarry's nine stores

Joseph Jakicevich's 1945 licence allowed only New Zealand wine, with a two-gallon minimum. More than eighty years on, his great-granddaughter Aroha has chosen a smaller Glengarry: three Auckland stores and the online business stay with the family, and six go to Big Barrel Group.

The Jakicevich family started out making wine, and they have been selling it around Ponsonby, in Auckland, since the early 1940s. In 1945 Joseph Jakicevich was granted a licence to open one of New Zealand's first wine shops, at 54 Jervois Road in Herne Bay, under rules that would puzzle a customer today: only New Zealand wine could be sold, and the minimum purchase was two gallons. The shop still stands. In the 1970s, according to the family, it hosted the country's first consumer wine tastings.

Out of Jervois Road grew Glengarry Wines, New Zealand's oldest family-owned fine wine and spirits retailer, with a sister store on Ponsonby Road and a network that reached seventeen stores in 2023. In January 2025 Aroha Jakicevich, Joseph's great-granddaughter, stepped into the leadership as family business manager, the fourth generation of the family to run it. She wrote at the time that when you are part of a family business, people assume the script is already written. "You respect it, sure, but you've also got to shake it up a bit."

The network had already been shrinking for three years by then. The question in front of the fourth generation was what size of Glengarry it wanted to own, and Aroha's answer was the one she had grown up around: "Smaller, more hands-on and deeply connected to the stores themselves. That is where I believe Glengarry is at its best."

On 25 May 2026 Glengarry and Big Barrel Group announced a transition agreement under which Big Barrel takes six stores, two in Wellington and four in Auckland. Glengarry keeps three Auckland stores and its online business. The sale runs over several months. The family announced it as the moment ownership and direction passed to Aroha's generation.

Aroha Jakicevich was clear that this was "not a corporate acquisition". "In many ways, this is a return to the structure of the business I grew up around," she said. A significant family investment is going into a new website, and the smaller footprint gives the business more time to curate its range and expand its imported and exclusive wines and spirits. The six stores went to a buyer that wants to run more of them. The three that stayed are with a family that wants to run fewer of them, closely.

Aroha Jakicevich took ownership and direction of Glengarry and, in the same breath, made it smaller on purpose. "Legacy isn't static," she wrote a year before the deal. More than eighty years after a two-gallon minimum on Jervois Road, the business is three shops, a website the family are paying for themselves, and, in her words, "fiercely independent, because that's just how we roll".

Further readingthe NZ HeraldInside Retail NZBusinessDesk

Selling as successful succession

More than 55 years after Richard Jay opened an Adelaide laundromat, his three daughters sold the business that carries his name

Carolyn Kirk, Libby Baldwin and Kathie Smith ran the commercial laundry and chemicals group their father founded in Adelaide in 1969. In March 2026 they sold it to Fortitude Investment Partners, with the chief executive staying on.

Richard Jay opened a single laundromat in Adelaide in 1969. The business he started still carries his name, and it was his three daughters who ran it into its second half-century. By the time the company marked its fiftieth year in 2019, Carolyn Kirk was managing director, Libby Baldwin was marketing director and their sister Kathie Smith was also in the business. The company described them then as having juggled motherhood with busy careers while running a multi-million-dollar corporation.

Richard Jay is now a national group run from Acacia Ridge in Brisbane. It has offices and warehouses in every state and about 90 staff. Aged care and education are its biggest customers. Revenue had been growing at 20 to 25 per cent a year for the three years before the sale. Since 2014 the company has been a founding partner of Orange Sky, the mobile laundry service for people experiencing homelessness.

The sisters marked the fiftieth anniversary with a gala for the team, clients and suppliers. They put the company's success down to a "future focus" kept up "even when that was not the in thing", and said "it's the people who have made the journey memorable".

In March 2026 the family sold the group to Fortitude Investment Partners, a Brisbane investment firm. Several private equity firms bid. The two sides were not strangers: Fortitude co-founder Nick Miller is a long-standing director of Orange Sky. Carolyn Kirk, speaking for the family, talked about what the sale would bring. "After more than 55 years of family ownership, we are pleased to announce the sale of our group of companies," she said. The new owner would add "additional expertise and investment" which, together with the team and "the strong foundations we have built over multiple generations", would let the group "expand on its ability to assist our customers and our communities".

Fortitude took a majority stake, and what it bought into was the team the family had built. Chief executive Matthew Manterfield and Ian Elliot, who runs the chemicals business, stay in their roles and have partnered with Fortitude in the new ownership. Fortitude's Sam O'Connor said the firm was "backing the existing management team". Manterfield acknowledged "the Richard Jay family and their support in building Richard Jay".

After more than 55 years, the family have sold. The running of the business did not change hands with the ownership. Richard Jay started with one laundromat, his daughters built something in every state, and when they sold, the managers who had been running it alongside them stayed where they were. The name over the door is still his.

Further readingClayton UtzAdviserVoiceIonanalytics

Partial liquidity

Forty-four years on, the Bongiorno family chose a partner for Alba Cheese, not an exit

Brothers Mario and Gaetano Bongiorno opened a Tullamarine cheese factory in 1982 with about two thousand litres of milk a day. In November 2025 the second generation sold a majority stake to Apta Group and kept making the cheese.

Luciano Bongiorno taught his sons Mario and Gaetano the family's cheesemaking secrets in Sortino, in Italy. In the early 1960s the brothers brought that knowledge to Australia and spent close to twenty years working in the cheese industry here before they opened a factory of their own in 1982. It started with about two thousand litres of milk a day.

Alba Cheese has been at 33 Assembly Drive in Tullamarine ever since, in an industrial estate near the airport, and the shopfront's hot ricotta, sold straight from the vat, has made it a Melbourne institution. Behind the shop is a business that supplies retail, foodservice and industrial customers across Australia and exports to South East Asia and China. At the 2025 Australian Dairy Awards it took home six gold and seven silver medals and both the Gold and Silver Champion Cheese Maker titles. The second generation of the family runs it now.

Export demand is what brought the family to a decision. The growth in front of the Alba brand, particularly overseas, needed more than the family could bring to it alone, and there was no shortage of people willing to help. Multinational dairy companies were interested. So were private equity firms. The family's brief to their adviser was specific: this was not to be a full exit.

In November 2025 they chose Apta Group, an investor that buys into family food manufacturers at the point of succession, and sold it a majority stake. One of Apta's shareholders owns the ingredients business Oppenheimer, which was part of the appeal. The family were choosing a partner with something to offer beyond capital.

What hasn't changed is who makes the cheese. The family still hold a stake and still run the business, and the deal was structured to support their expansion plans while they stay involved. Their own announcement called it "the beginning of a new and very exciting journey for our family business", and said the partnership lets them "continue doing what we love as a family business still crafting high-quality, Italian-style cheese while growing our capabilities". The ambition on the table is for Alba to become Australia's leading boutique cheese exporter.

The Bongiornos did not treat selling and staying as opposites. They sold most of the company to fund the next stage and kept the part that was theirs to begin with. The second generation are still in the factory at Tullamarine, making the cheese Mario and Gaetano learned from their father in Sortino.

Further readingApta GroupFood & Drink BusinessBDO

The right external custodian

John Interlandi, 90, has passed Europa Cheese's Pakenham factory and his recipes to Gippsland Jersey, and still comes in to make the cheese

John Interlandi took a factory licence in 1971 and built Europa Cheese to four tonnes a week. The brand sold to Gippsland Jersey in November 2025, and at 90 he still makes cheese there beside grandson Michael.

John Interlandi's father came out from Italy in the late 1920s and made what Gippsland called fancy cheese. John was born at Korumburra and grew up on a dairy farm in the Strzelecki Ranges, and when his father passed away he kept making cheese to support the family. He is 90 now. He still goes in to the factory at Pakenham, in Melbourne's south-east, and he still wants the same thing from every wheel. "I always try to do the best," he says. "I want to see a cheese that's perfect."

In 1971 John and his British wife Jackie obtained a factory licence and set up Europa Cheese in Hawthorn. After sixteen years they moved it to Dandenong, and in 2005 to Pakenham. At its peak Europa made around four tonnes of cheese a week and sent it to every state but Tasmania, including grated cheese for Patties and Heinz. Their son Stephen casts the wheels. Their grandson Michael, who is 30, works beside John at the vats. That is three generations of Interlandis in the one building.

The Pakenham factory was for sale, and the buyers came from further east in Gippsland. Steve Ronalds and Sallie Jones had started Gippsland Jersey in 2016 and had outgrown their factory at Lakes Entrance. In October 2024 they bought the Europa factory and moved their equipment across over the summer. They made their first ricotta and pecorino there in early February 2025.

John sold the Europa brand in November 2025. He has not stopped. Since the factory changed hands he has been working alongside Steve Ronalds, using his traditional recipes to teach him the skills of cheesemaking, and Gippsland Jersey is now making ricotta and pecorino at Pakenham with cheddars, a twelve-month Jersey Parmesan and a factory shop to come. "I don't feel like I'm 90 because I'm not tired," he told the ABC.

John did not leave with the recipes. The building changed hands first and the brand followed a year later, and in between he stood at the bench with the people taking Europa on, with his grandson beside him, until what he knew was theirs too. John kept making cheese to support his family after his father passed away. He is still making it at 90, and still not satisfied with anything short of perfect.

Further readingABC News

Selling as successful succession

Three decades on, Marcel and Manuela Goerke handed Birkenstock Australia to the brand Marcel's father once sold

Marcel Goerke followed his father, a Birkenstock retailer, into the trade. With his wife Manuela he built the brand's Australian arm from the early 1990s into an $88.6 million business. In October 2025 they sold it to Birkenstock itself.

Marcel Goerke's father was a Birkenstock retailer. Marcel followed him into the trade. In the early 1990s he and his wife Manuela founded Birkenstock Australia, the brand's distributor here, and ran it from Melbourne. Marcel's own description of the decades that followed is modest about the scale of the job: "The marketing of BIRKENSTOCK's core values of quality, craftsmanship and sustainability by a dedicated team of enthusiasts over three decades has made its mark."

It had. By the middle of 2025 the business employed around 60 people and had turned over AUD 88.6 million in the twelve months to 30 June. It ran two of its own stores in Melbourne, a single-brand partner store in Sydney and an online shop. It supplied more than 300 wholesale partners around the country. Birkenstock's chief executive, Oliver Reichert, has said Australia is now one of the countries with the highest Birkenstock sales per head anywhere in the world. "BIRKENSTOCK has been a part of the Australian lifestyle for well over 30 years," Marcel said.

What the couple chose was a full sale of the business to Birkenstock itself. The agreement was signed on 15 October 2025 and the sale completed before the end of the month. Birkenstock said the purchase "seeks to ensure a seamless succession for the two founders of BIRKENSTOCK Australia", and undertook to keep every contract, asset and employee in place. The word succession is the buyer's. The three decades of work it describes are the family's.

Marcel agreed to stay on as managing director through the transition. His statement on the day was about the people in the business rather than himself. "It's also great news for all those here who work day in, day out to ensure that all Birkenstock fans in Australia have an extraordinary brand experience allowing them to walk as nature intended."

Marcel and Manuela Goerke spent thirty years building a market for a brand that belonged to someone else, and when they sold, the brand was the buyer, taking on the contracts, the stores and the people intact. Marcel's father sold Birkenstocks as a retailer. His son and daughter-in-law did the same across a country, and then handed the business to the company whose name had been over the door all along.

Further readingBirkenstock (SEC filing)TipranksRetailBiz

Partial liquidity

Nick Thyssen put fresh juice on Australian shelves. In his late sixties he started a dairy with his son, and his daughter Laney Quinn runs it now

Nick Thyssen and his son Adam started Procal Dairies in Melbourne in 2003, the year after the family sold The Original Juice Co. In July 2025 the family brought in Anacacia Capital as majority partner, kept a significant stake, and kept Laney Quinn as chief executive.

Nick Thyssen came to Australia from Valimitika, a farming village near Aigio in Greece, with twenty pounds from his brother. He went on to put fresh juice on the shelves of a country that had only known the tinned and concentrated kind, first with Patra Orange Juice and then with The Original Juice Co, and the trade knew him as Mr Patra Orange. The family sold The Original Juice Co to Golden Circle in 2002.

He was in his late sixties, and he started again. The next year he and his son Adam opened Procal Dairies in Melbourne, and it began trading in July 2003.

Over the next two decades the dairy grew a broad shelf: milk, cream and yoghurt first, then juice again under The Great Australian Squeeze and Milla's, supplied to cafes, restaurants and supermarkets across Victoria and New South Wales and to export partners. Along the way it collected Dairy Industry Association of Australia and Royal Melbourne Fine Food awards, and pioneered Australia's first back-to-base bottle return program, with cafes sending their empties home on the delivery run, about 60 per cent of the bottles it sells.

Adam Thyssen passed away in 2020. His sister Laney Quinn, Nick Thyssen's daughter, has led the business as chief executive since. Procal, in her words, "has always been a family business".

The next step came in July 2025, when the family brought in Anacacia Capital, a private equity investor they had known for ten years, as majority partner. The Thyssen family and the management team remain significant shareholders, Laney Quinn continues as chief executive, and the capital goes into capacity and reach. Nick Thyssen was beside his daughter for the announcement.

The family's own words were about what they had built and what stays theirs. "We are incredibly proud of what our family and team has built over the past two decades," Laney Quinn said. "Partnering with Anacacia marks an exciting new chapter for us. Their deep experience with family business and a relationship built over 10 years made them a natural fit." The partnership, she said, was about "expanding our family legacy".

The first time the Thyssens sold a business, they sold all of it and started again in a different industry. This time they sold most of it and stayed. Laney Quinn runs the dairy her father and brother started, the family's name is still on the shareholder register, and the word she reached for was expanding, not exiting.

Further readingAnacacia CapitalArnold Bloch LeiblerProcalNeos Kosmos on Nick Thyssen's biography

Next generation choosing differently

Mala Salakas's Sans Souci party shop became The Party People. Her sons Dean and Peter sold it when it outgrew the capital they had

Professional clown Mala Salakas took on a Sydney party shop in the mid 1980s. Her sons Dean and Peter ran it from 2007 and opened Australia's largest party store. In December 2024 they sold to Sydney Party Decorations.

Mala Salakas was a professional clown. She had been running a children's event business since 1982 when, in the mid 1980s, she and her father Peter Nikolas took on a party supplies retailer called The Party People and its shop at Sans Souci, in Sydney's south. Her son Dean was still at school when he built the shop a website; he dates the online store to 1999.

In 2007 the business passed to Mala's sons, Dean and Peter. Dean became chief executive, or Chief Party Dude as his title had it. Peter, as co-chief executive, ran much of the operation, and Dean has called him the unsung hero. In 2011 the brothers opened the Drummoyne store, billed as Australia's largest party supplies outlet. The business grew to more than 35,000 product lines and, by the company's count, more than a million parties served. Dean claims a run of Australian retail firsts for it, from click and collect to an augmented reality mirror with checkout built in. They went on Shark Tank in 2015 and turned the offer down.

It was, in Dean's words, "obviously a good business". What it did not have was capital. In October 2024 the family said so plainly. "We have decided that the business needs significant investment scale to the next level for which we don't have the capital," the company said, adding that they were open either to finding that capital or to a sale to the right person. Dean posted the news on LinkedIn, and more than 30 parties came forward.

On 4 December 2024 the brothers agreed to sell the Drummoyne flagship and the online business to Sydney Party Decorations, a Sydney party retailer that had bought The Party People's Campbelltown store earlier that year. "It was the best offer on that table and we've taken the best offer," Dean said. "We did have a couple of investment offers but this one beat that." He stepped down on 17 December, after 17 years as chief executive. "It's a mixture of emotions but I am so grateful for my journey having worked with some great people and partners along the way in my 17 years as ceo," he wrote.

Dean has stayed in the industry, first as head of growth at Party Hire Group and since August 2025 as a consultant with Retail Doctor Group. Peter has not spoken publicly about the sale. Dean's hope for what they handed over was simple: "I hope they keep the brand and the legacy and I hope they grow it, continuing what we started."

Mala Salakas started with a clown act and a shop at Sans Souci. Her sons took that shop as far as their own capital would carry it, and rather than run it short, they named the limit out loud and went looking for the owner who could fund the next part. Dean is still in retail. The brand his mother bought is in its third set of hands.

Further readingSmartCompany

Selling as successful succession

The Milne family sold NPD, their father's Nelson fuel business, to Barry Sheridan, who had spent thirty-three years inside it

The Milne family started Nelson Petroleum Distributors in the 1960s. In May 2024 the founder's children sold it outright to Barry Sheridan, who had run it for fifteen years.

The company that Barry Milne and Pauline Field's father started in Nelson in the 1960s carried fuel for other people. Nelson Petroleum Distributors, NPD for short, was a contract carrier for Mobil fuels and Castrol lubricants, and in 1996 it became a Mobil wholesale distributor in its own right, with eleven locations and two trucks.

Barry Sheridan had joined by then. He started at NPD in 1991 and spent the next three decades working alongside the Milne family, about fifteen of those years as chief executive. Under the family's ownership and his management the business grew from a Nelson distributor into a national value fuel brand: thirty sites by 2013, forty by 2016, sixty-seven by 2019, and in 2020 its first sites in the North Island. NPD describes itself as built on value pricing and unmanned self-serve sites.

By 2024 the founder's children held the majority of the shares and Sheridan held ten per cent. The question of who would own NPD next had an answer already inside the building.

On 22 May 2024 the Milnes sold him the rest, and Barry Sheridan became NPD's sole owner. "We are thrilled to see the company that our father started in the 1960's will stay as a New Zealand-owned family business," Barry Milne and Pauline Field said, adding that they looked forward to seeing NPD grow, "knowing it is in safe hands". Sheridan said keeping NPD locally owned would ensure "that it remains true to its values and vision for years to come", and that under the new ownership model it would be business as usual.

Two years later Sheridan merged NPD with Gull New Zealand, and his family hold half of the combined business.

What is plain is what the Milnes chose. The successor was not a Milne, and the family did not go looking outside for one; he had been in the business for thirty-three years when they handed it over. The company their father started in the 1960s is still New Zealand owned and still run by the man they left it with, which is what Barry Milne and Pauline Field said they wanted for it.

Further readingthe NZ Commerce Commission1Newsthe NZ Commerce Commission

Selling as successful succession

Gary West and the second generation retired from the pump business built at Seven Hills, and chose who would carry it on

For more than forty years Pumpseal Sales sold and serviced industrial pumps from Seven Hills, in Sydney's west. In 2023 the second-generation directors, planning their retirement, weighed three offers and chose Pump Engineers.

Gary West and the second generation of a Seven Hills family ran Pumpseal Sales for the last stretch of its forty years. The business had been distributing industrial pumps and wear parts from Sydney's west since 1982, the kind of business whose customers ring when something has stopped turning. By 2023 its directors were the second generation, Gary West among them.

The name was built on agencies. Pumpseal held the Australian agencies for a handful of overseas pump makers and serviced what it sold, from Seven Hills out to the Pacific. Its supply and repair contracts ran to well-known companies and government utilities. It is unglamorous, essential work, and the family had done it long enough to be known for it.

In 2023 the second-generation directors decided it was time to step back, and they set in place an exit strategy for their retirement. Their plan was a sale, and they wanted the business to keep going after they left it, for the staff and the customers who depended on it.

The business went to market nationally and drew three non-binding offers. The directors chose Pump Engineers, a privately owned Melbourne company in the same trade since 1972. The sale was announced in July 2023. Gary West put the family's reasoning simply. "We felt commercially Pump Engineers were the best fit to take the Business forward and provide continuity for our staff and customers," he said.

Three years on, the continuity the family asked for is visible in an ordinary place: Pump Engineers' own list of partnerships and exclusive distributorships now includes Coxreels, ARO and Flowserve, the same agencies Pumpseal built its name on, so the product lines the family spent decades earning travelled with the business.

The second generation have retired. That part of the story is over, and selling the business was, as Gary West described it, "a path we had not previously walked". What they built at Seven Hills did not end with them. The agencies the family assembled over forty years are still being sold, under Pump Engineers' name, which is the continuity Gary West said the family were choosing when they chose the buyer.

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