Succession stories

David Wren started PassMark Software in Sydney in 1998 and put its first product on sale in May 1999. It made 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, BurnInTest, OSForensics and MemTest86 are used by hundreds of thousands of people, and 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 knowledge across a full product range sits in one person's head. Whatever prompted Wren to sell, and he has not said publicly what it was, the shape of the deal he did suggests he took that problem seriously.

In May 2026 PassMark announced that Jackson Allan, with a group of private investors, had bought the business. It was structured as an asset sale, with new operating entities set up in Australia and the United States, new banking details, and a careful public note to customers about which contracts would need re-signing. 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 the person who knows how the products work. Those three things are usually described as one decision. They are not. He has separated them, and bought the buyer a year to catch up.

Further readingPassMark SoftwarePassMark transition FAQSearch Fund Oz

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, and 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 the five remaining Tamworth venues and the brewery, with a hundred and eight gaming machines and about two hectares of freehold land, were announced as sold to the regional hotel owner IMG, in a deal the trade press put at $160 million. No party has confirmed a figure, and nobody has said why. "For us it's about recognising the right time for the business to evolve under new ownership," Power said, and declined to discuss the transaction itself.

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. Whether the TPG Hotels name survives, and whether any Power or Douglas stays on, has not been announced.

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

Major and Irene Bates bought the supermarket in Officer Street, Mortlake, 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 died 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, and 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 Western District 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 Supa IGA and a rural store in Terang and Mitre 10 stores in Terang and Camperdown, and employs about 130 people. In mid-October 2026 it takes over the Mortlake supermarket. Terms have not been announced. "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 the year she hopes to take a trip in their honour.

Further readingThe StandardMortlake DispatchTerang Co-op

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 then the people running Stellar day to day were no longer the Lynches. Around 2020 a new management team took the helm: Sam Allen, who had been with the company for more than a decade and became chief executive; Annie Zhong, who joined in 2016 as a financial accountant and rose to chief financial officer; and Daniel Jacobs, who joined in 2017 and led the onboarding of American Airlines in 2023. 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. The trade press called it a management buyout. Terms were not disclosed, and 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."

The Lynches separated the two handovers. Management went first, some six years ago, and ownership followed once the people running the company had shown what they could do with it. 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

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 this year. 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, Dorinda Parker, inherited it at four, took it over at eighteen with her husband George Silas Curtis, and the Curtis 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 next year. The family put the hotel to market on 1 May 2026, the first time it had been offered in 35 years. Elders, who ran the campaign, said the family had decided it was time to move to the next chapter.

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

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 the Cordina Group: Cordina Chicken Farms for fresh poultry, The Cordina Food Co for cooked multi-protein manufacturing, and Summertime Chickens for precision and specialty cuts, with product now exported worldwide. 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 their lawyers put at $300 million, and kept a stake alongside their new majority partner. Louise Cordina stayed on as chief executive; Gordon McCann, the Hamilton Locke partner who acted for the family, said at the time that the investment by PAG into this fourth generation business would, under her stewardship at the helm, be a great success. 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. 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 the Cordinas have brought in a partner to hold the majority, and twice they 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

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 Kingoonya aggregation alone ran to 1.29 million of them, Commonwealth Hill at 553,100 hectares, Mobella at 426,600 and Bulgunnia at 310,000, carrying a self-replacing Merino flock in the Glendambo country. 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. Jock and Callum left their joint managing director roles that year as part of the plan, and Airlie, Islay and Brooke 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. Elders handled it and no price was disclosed. 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 sold the OTR convenience business to Viva Energy in 2024 and bought Aileron Station in the Northern Territory the year after, 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

The Jakicevich family started out making wine, and they have been selling it around Ponsonby 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: Thorndon and Kelburn in Wellington, and Bassett Road, Parnell, Khyber Pass and Victoria Park in Auckland. Glengarry keeps three Auckland stores and its online business. The price was not disclosed. The sale runs over several months, with both companies committed to continuity for customers and staff, and it was announced as the family business's ownership and direction passing to Aroha's generation. Big Barrel, founded in 2003 and now at 52 stores nationwide, called the deal a long-term investment in specialist liquor retailing.

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. Eighty-one 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

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 today is a national group trading as Richard Jay, JayChem and Symbio, run from Success Street in Acacia Ridge in Brisbane, with offices and warehouses in every state, about 90 staff and 200 contractors, and customers across hospitality, healthcare, education, mining, government and community services, with aged care and education the biggest groups. 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, in the first investment from its flagship Fortitude Fund. Several private equity firms bid. The two sides were not strangers: Fortitude co-founder Nick Miller is a long-standing director of Orange Sky. The sisters have not said what brought them to the decision. 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" into what he called Australia's only fully integrated, nationwide provider of commercial laundry and chemical solutions to essential services.

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

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

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 died he kept making cheese to support the family. He is 90 now. He still goes in to the factory at Pakenham, 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, a dairy farmer at Jindivick, and Sallie Jones had started Gippsland Jersey in 2016, crowd-funded a factory at Lakes Entrance in 2020 and won the Dairy Industry Association of Australia's award for the country's best milk in 2024. They had outgrown Lakes Entrance and wanted room to grow and West Gippsland logistics. In October 2024 they bought the Europa factory, moved their equipment across over the summer, and made their first ricotta and pecorino there in early February 2025.

John sold the Europa brand in November 2025. He has not said why, and 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.

There are handovers where the recipes leave with the founder and the new owner starts again from the manual. This one went the other way. The building changed hands first, the brand followed a year later, and in between the man who built Europa stood at the bench with the people taking it on, with his grandson beside him. John kept making cheese to support his family after his father died. He is still making it at 90, and still not satisfied with anything short of perfect.

Further readingABC News

Marcel Goerke's father was a Birkenstock retailer. Birkenstock's chief executive, Oliver Reichert, has said Marcel "followed in his father's footsteps", and 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, and supplied more than 300 wholesale partners around the country. 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.

The couple have not said what brought them to the decision to sell. What is on the record is what they chose: 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, for a price that was not disclosed. 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, reporting to Klaus Baumann, the group's chief sales officer. Manuela's role after the sale has not been said. Birkenstock said it plans to invest in the Australian business, with more resources for the independent retailers and the stores, and Marcel's statement on the day was about those people 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."

Reichert's summary of what the couple had done was that Birkenstock Australia "shows what people can achieve when love, dedication, and hard work come together with a product that has a genuine purpose". 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

The Thyssen family had built and sold one drinks business before they started Procal. The Original Juice Co, a market-leading juice brand, went to Golden Circle in 2002. The following year father and son Nick and Adam Thyssen started again, this time in milk, and Procal Dairies began trading in Melbourne in July 2003.

Over the next two decades the dairy grew a broad shelf: milk, cream and yoghurt first, then juices under The Great Australian Squeeze and Milla's, supplied to cafes, restaurants and supermarkets across Victoria and New South Wales, with Woolworths, Coles and Costco among the customers listed on its site, and export partners as well. Procal's own account of itself includes Dairy Industry Association of Australia and Royal Melbourne Fine Food awards, a cafe recycling system it pioneered called PoP-it, and a delivery run made by owner-operator drivers. By 2025 its revenue was reported at around A$100 million.

Adam Thyssen died in 2020. His sister Laney Quinn, Nick'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 sold a majority stake to Anacacia Capital, a private equity investor the family had known for ten years. The Thyssen family and existing management remain significant shareholders, Laney continues as chief executive, and George Weston Foods chief executive Stuart Grainger has joined the board. Nick Thyssen was beside his daughter for the announcement. He appears to have stepped back from the business; Anacacia called the deal "a classic Anacacia style investment, helping retired founders to sell a majority stake and partner the next generation to take the business up a level".

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 LeiblerProcal

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

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, unmanned self-serve sites and a 100 octane fuel, with its own Scania tanker fleet driven by NPD staff and a fuel card carried by more than four thousand customers.

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. The buyout was funded by a NZ$140 million debt package from Carlyle and the Australian private credit manager amicaa. "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.

The next step came quickly. On Christmas Day 2025 NPD and Gull New Zealand, owned by the Australian firm Allegro Funds, announced a plan to merge. The Commerce Commission cleared the merger on 7 May 2026 and it completed in July. The combined business keeps both brands, runs around 240 sites from Invercargill to Kaitaia, and is owned half by the Sheridan family and half by Allegro Funds. Sheridan is group chief executive, and has talked about a bigger North Island delivery fleet, more storage and more staff so the group controls its supply from port to pump.

The Milne family have not said why they sold, and the story does not need a reason supplied for them. What is plain is what they 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, now at roughly twice the size.

Further readingthe NZ Commerce Commission1Newsthe NZ Commerce Commission

For more than forty years there was a family business at 21 Prince William Drive, Seven Hills, in New South Wales, that sold and serviced industrial pumps. Pumpseal Sales was a wholesale distributor of pumps, related equipment and wear parts, the kind of business whose customers ring when something has stopped turning. By 2023 it was run by the family's second generation, among them director Gary West.

The name was built on agencies. Pumpseal was the exclusive agent for local and international manufacturers including Coxreels, Flowserve TKL and ARO Fluid Products, and by its own account it supplied pumps, allied equipment and ancillary services across Australia, the Pacific Islands and South-East Asia, holding supply and repair contracts with 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.

The business went to market nationally and drew three non-binding offers. The directors chose the one that, in their adviser's words, represented the best commercial and cultural fit: Pump Engineers, a privately owned Victorian company that has supplied pumping solutions to Australian industries since 1972, with a Melbourne head office and branches in Brisbane, Sydney and Townsville. The sale was announced in July 2023, price undisclosed. 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.

For Pump Engineers the purchase was the basis for expanding into New South Wales and added to its portfolio of equipment brands. 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 appear to have travelled intact.

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.

Further readingJohnsons CorporatePumpseal SalesPumpseal Sales