Wheat wooed

AWB, formerly the Australian Wheat Board, is, in the words of treasury general manager Gordon Morriss, a “peculiar animal”. It is probably the only monopoly marketing authority in the world that counts risk management as an integral part of its business. By Roger Hogan

AWB’s business is diverse, operationally and geographically. Its original purpose – to pool and export wheat produced by Australian farmers – remains its core activity but, since deregulation in the mid-1980s, AWB has become increasingly involved in domestic trading and in other grains. After privatisation in 1988 and listing on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2001, it reconfigured itself with the acquisition, in August 2003, of Landmark, a large rural services business that, among other things