Peter Menegazzo

Who was Peter Menegazzo?

Peter Menegazzo was an Australian grain grower and cattle baron. Born to a modest immigrant family of fruit and vegetable growers, Menegazzo was said to be an intensely private person who rarely gave media interviews.

Menegazzo's father emigrated from Italy in 1925 to settle near Melbourne. Menegazzo helped build the family's fruit and vegetable merchant businesses across Australia. He later moved to Victoria, where he would become Australia's largest potato grower. In 1987, after a Cape holiday, Menegazzo moved his interests to beef and purchased several cattle stations, including Van Rook, Glen Ore and Warren Vale.

In 2003, Menegazzo came under media attention with his purchase of Stanbroke Pastoral Company, said to be the largest rural transaction in Australia's history. The chain of events surrounding that sale caused outrage in the beef industry who were attempting to gain control of the company. Partner in the Nebo Consortium, Menegazzo became one of Australia's largest landholders, and the third-biggest cattle owner, with the $417.5 million plus debt sale, gaining 115,000 square kilometres and a herd of half a million cattle. Eight months after the sale, the Nebo group split over the management of the properties, and Menegazzo bought out the remaining half for a rumoured $340 million. Menegazzo reaped a reported cash return of over $500 million in less than a year.