ACM’s North Richmond estate sale marks the end of a rural media dynasty

For anyone tracking the slow-motion carve-up of Australian regional media, the for-sale sign now hanging over a 10.6-hectare estate in Sydney’s northwest says more than any balance sheet. Australian Community Media, the country’s largest independent newspaper group, is flogging the former Fairfax Rural Press headquarters at North Richmond in two separate deals, hoping to pull in roughly $25 million. The smaller slice has already found a buyer at about $5 million; the bigger parcel, purpose-built as the home of The Land newspaper, carries a $20 million asking price. This is not just a property transaction. It is the closing chapter of a print empire that once anchored rural Australia’s news diet.

ACM’s co-owners, Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz, bought the business in mid-2019 for $115 million, inheriting a sprawling portfolio of regional and capital-city real estate. Most of that has since been sold to trim debt and fund restructuring, and this latest disposal follows the same playbook. But the urgency is now sharper. Accounts for the 2025 financial year, lodged in April, show the parent company 20 Cashews Pty Ltd made a net loss of $7.9 million, burned through $1.54 million in operating cash, and ended the year with current liabilities outstripping current assets by $18.5 million. Total borrowings stood at $63.5 million against $120 million in assets. Directors still declared the business a going concern, but the language of resilience is doing heavy lifting here.

The backdrop is grimly personal. Catalano, who stepped back from his executive chair role after being charged with eight criminal offences in Victoria, is accused of a violent domestic assault on his wife Stefanie in March. Police allege he swung a clothes iron at her head, unlawfully imprisoned her, threatened to stab her to death and choked or strangled her; she was hospitalised with a fractured tailbone. Catalano has said he was struggling with significant mental health and substance abuse issues and entered a rehabilitation facility. In his absence, his eldest son Jordan took a board seat, and last month his 25-year-old son Luca was also appointed a director, shifting the balance of power against Waislitz’s representatives. The optics are unflattering for a company that still publishes mastheads trusted in country towns.

For outsiders, it helps to understand what ACM once was. It grew from the Rural Press stable, a Fairfax offshoot that served farming communities with titles like The Land, and expanded into a network of local papers across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. When Catalano and Waislitz bought it, they were buying not just printing presses but a cultural institution — the weekly voice of the shearing shed and the stock sale. The property sell-off has been methodical, with an ACM spokesperson describing it as an orderly disposal of non-core, surplus assets that has delivered substantial monies to shareholders. But the North Richmond site was never surplus in spirit. It was the physical heart of agricultural journalism, and its sale signals how far the sector has fallen from the days when rural readership meant political and commercial clout.

What does this say about capital in Oceania? First, that private equity-style asset stripping has reached even the most storied regional publishers. The pair’s strategy has been to monetise land rather than invest in journalism, a bet that the real estate was worth more than the mastheads. Second, the vultures are circling. Sources close to the business confirm that Waislitz’s Thorney has fielded several expressions of interest in buying ACM outright, and that billionaire Gina Rinehart held discussions before Catalano’s alleged assault about investing or acquiring. Rinehart’s interest in media is well documented, and her deep pockets could provide a lifeline — or a takeover that further concentrates Australia’s already narrow news ownership. Either way, the next owner will inherit a business that lost money last year, has negative working capital, and is now shedding its most tangible asset.

The Richmond sale will not save ACM on its own. But it buys time, and time is what Catalano and Waislitz need to find an exit. For readers in Dubbo or Wagga Wagga, the mastheads will keep printing for now. Yet the signal is unmistakable: the era of the family-owned rural newspaper baron, with his country estate and printing plant, is over. What replaces it — a Rinehart-backed media play, a Thorney consolidation, or a slow wind-down — will define how regional Australia gets its news for the next decade. The iron is not the only thing that has swung hard at this company’s foundations.