The Sheet: Great Southern Bank

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Great Southern Plantations is one of the fastest growing banks that you’ve never heard of.
For the most part of the “noughties” Great Southern has been writing loans to plantation growers as part of an attractive tax-based investment scheme, which has a product ruling from the Australian Taxation Office.
The company is not actually a bank, but rather a forestry company. Great Southern also does a lot of lending, and takes decisions about which loans are funded by its partner in this enterprise, Adelaide Bank.
“We’re a fund manager, a boutique fund manager in the agribusiness space,” said David Ikin, head of public relations at Great Southern.
Last year the company loaned money to 90 per cent of the people who put $355 million into its plantations. And this year it expects again that 90 per cent of its growers will be financed this way. Of these loans, most are funded by Adelaide Bank.
According to Great Southern’s annual report, Adelaide Bank had securitised $179 million worth of loans last year. Most of these comprised interest-free loans of up to two years and another $84 million in principal and interest loans of up to ten years.
Adelaide Bank’s annual report said that it had secured $200 million in “portfolio funding” in three months. The report said it hoped to lift funding to $750 million by the end of the 2005/2006 financial year and to secure $1.8 billion in loans through similar schemes by June 2008.

Ed Charles is a journalist and digital consultant who spend the better part of the part two decades in Australia. He trained with IPC in London and has written for major international and national business and lifestyle titles. Establishing this blog in 2005, he was one of the first of a handful of food bloggers in Australia. He's spoken at the Melbourne Writers Festival and Emerging Writers Festival and has broadcasted regularly on food and digital media issues. He is currently writing a history of mankind told through food.

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