Trahar seeks 100pc of CO2 Australia

Ian Trahar has moved to take full ownership of environmental services company CO2 Australia, which was demerged from Seafarms Group more than five years ago.

Mr Trahar’s Avatar Industries has offered CO2 Australia shareholders 0.091 of a cent per share to acquire the remining 25 per cent of the company that is not held by interests associated with him, a venture likely to cost just under $1 million if all the other stakeholders accept.

In a letter dated January 5, CO2 Australia advised shareholders that the board had established an independent committee comprising directors Ian Leijer and Christopher Mitchell to respond to the offer. The committee had appointed Hamilton Locke to provide legal advice and BDO to prepare an independent expert's report.

CO2 Australia was spun-out in 2018 with an in specie distribution of shares to existing shareholders of the listed Seafarms entity.

Mr Trahar is the biggest shareholder of Seafarms, which he chairs, with about 30 per cent of the stock.

CO2 Australia was the remnant environment services business that had once been the prime focus of one of Seafarms’ predecessors, CO2 Group.

That had emerged from an earlier listed entity called Revesco Group and CO2 Group later became Commodities Group before switching to Seafarms in 2015.

At its demerger in 2018, the loss-making carbon services division of Seafarms, which became CO2 Australia, had about $5.5 million in turnover representing almost 20 per cent of the listed group’s total revenue that year.

CO2 Australia claims to be a market leader in carbon projects involving native regrowth and large scale reforestation one of Australia’s most experienced providers of major revegetation projects.

Apart from Western Australia, it has four offices on the east coast.

Avatar Industries was previously a listed industrial company that started life as Osborne Metals and then became Barrack Industries before taking on its exisiting name in 1993 when Mr Trahar became a director. It was listed until 2007.