Kimberley Food & Agribusiness

Kimberley Food & Agribusiness

Powered by the Ord Irrigation Area (ORIA), the region has 24,000 hectares under irrigation producing a range of tropical fruit, vegetable, fodder, grain and seed crops. The west Kimberley is seeing development of mosaic irrigated lands for fodder production, however there is significant room for further expansion and integration to value add to the pastoral sector
The ORIA produces mango, citrus, watermelon, rockmelon, pumpkin, chickpea, sunflower, sorghum, maize, sandalwood and other crops for Australian consumers and export markets.

Aquaculture
Main industry sectors are pearling and barramundi farming in the west Kimberley, with opportunity for large scale farmed prawns in the east Kimberley.

Pastoral
There are 92 Pastoral leases spanning across 21.2 million hectares including 32% Indigenous leases which are generally underperforming. Just over three percent of pastoral leases are under foreign ownership and are managed remotely. The industry is characterised by rangeland grazing with growing potential for irrigated fodder production to expand productivity.

The recently opened Kimberley Meat Company’s abattoir currently processes 35,000 head of cattle annually (with infrastructure capacity that can process 60,000 head annually) which has established new processed and boxed beef opportunities.