Big plantation owner across northern Australia in receivership again

The company owns large sandalwood plantations and real estate in the Northern Territory and the Kimberley with a listed business headquarters in Perth.

It also has an operations centre in Kununurra, a smaller plantation and land in Queensland, and the Mt Romance oil distillation facility and shop near Albany, WA.

Some of its biggest plantations were in the Katherine and Mataranka regions of the NT.

The sandalwood empire was founded with the financial support of thousands of mum and dad investors as a managed investment scheme.

Quintis Australia and its subsidiaries, including Sandalwood Properties Limited and Quintis Leasing, have appointed FTI Consulting as receivers.

The same company was recapitalised after falling into financial trouble back in 2018.

FTI Consulting this week said it would "urgently call" for expressions of interest in the sale and/or recapitalisation of the business.

The receivership firm said it was "currently working closely with key stakeholders to quickly conduct an independent assessment of the financial position of the entities that are the subject of their appointment and their ongoing and future viability".

Daniel Woodhouse, Hadyen White and John Park of FTI Consulting are the receivers and managers.

FTI Consulting says Quintis has worked collaboratively with them.

Quintis has spent two decades buying land and growing, then harvesting, Indian sandalwood to become the world's largest supplier of the fragrant product.

It planted its first plantations in 1999 from India-sourced seeds and its first harvest was in 2014.

Today the company is believed to own more than 3.5 million trees planted across 9000 hectares after its estate had grown to 12,000ha.

It has been selling off some land.

Ron Greentree, once Australia's largest private grower of wheat and a former Grain Growers Association chairman, bought some land off Quintis last year in the Kununurra.

Mr Greentree's Keep Farming has other land interests in the Ord irrigation area and is pursuing the expansion of cotton growing.

Back in 2017, Quintis was also in receivership and was successfully recapitalised.

It is believed between $125-$175 million of new cash was injected into the business to fund operations on a long-term basis.

At the time, it was revealed that thousands of people had invested in Quintis' managed investment schemes, then managed by TFS Corporation Ltd.

An assessment by KMPG last year found Quintis' managed investment schemes were not financially viable.

At that time, American investment company BlackRock emerged as the major investor in the relaunched company.

Since that time the price of the timber product has fallen by about half.