Adelaide visit was tops

Welcome to my Friday dribble where a talk about things agri, life and sport.

I spent a couple of days in Adelaide this week seeing companies.

I also caught up with the Adelaide team from A.P. Eagers/Adtrans. The whole team are pumped and ready for the merger with AHG. The proposed merger will see the truck division have a truly national presence with strong synergies to come. 

I also had a breakfast meeting with the team from Duxton Asset Management were we talked mainly about their water fund. They now have about $240m of water assets and the smallest but most profitable portion of that is the sale of entitlements where the pricing is still very strong, given the ongoing drought conditions in some regions.

Then we caught up with AVG. Australian Vintage is the owner of the McGuigan/ Tempus Two brand wines. A bit of colour on the Aussie wine market. 10 years ago there was 175t Hectares of grapes and we were in oversupply. Now that figure is approx. 135t. The annual harvest is normally 1.8mt, this year it was 1.5mt due to the drought. On this basis the supply demand equation should be coming back into equilibrium, which should mean higher prices for wine growers. 

Lastly as reported to the ASX today, BGA Executive Chairman Barry Irvin is taking a few weeks off to recover from some surgery. We wish him a speedy recovery. Being a tough old dairy farmer, I'm sure he will be back milking the cows in no time.