That would be a big admission by the Board of MGC to have to make and detrimental to soliciting any bids from external parties. It would have to be in an ASX announcement after a trading halt of the Unit Trust and it would then give any bidder the right to revise or withdraw their bids. Not sure they would contemplate that idea although I am sure it is front of mind for a few of the Directors.
As for only enough milk to support Leongatha and the time to right size has passed is an interesting view and possibly valid. But I will offer any company can right size in the face of declining performance figures and to some degree that is the responsibility of the Board, as is the case with the new Board. The challenge is whether they are right sizing the company for the right reasons and is the general market in decline / stabilising / regrowing where right-sizing is warranted. So many questions underneath that would need to be answered as it relates to product mix, target market, available capital, brand reputation, company maturity, IP, future milk supply etc etc... I would hazard a guess MGC has quite a team in at Southbank and other locations working through these questions and the possible scenarios to try and get an answer. I offer the answer is always "yes, you can right size" but two more important questions are "is it viable" and "is it worth the effort" and I don't know the answer to those.
In an ideal world I would like to see BEGA get first dibs, then Fonterra. only for the reason that I would like to see an AU or AU/NZ operator competing on the international stage and for AU to have something we can be proud of and support instead of it being another industry segment lost to offshore interests and become a regional outpost or platform for their own interests rather than ours.
Sadly, we don't live in an ideal world and don't have too much tangible support from Canberra so we live with the wolves circling.
Perochial? Yup it is...
P.S. Dont tell cabaking I like the BEGA take-over as he bangs on about it enough as it is and doesn't need feeding.
