RIDLEY CORPORATION LIMITED — Call Transcript 2003

Sep 23, 2003

Attention ASX Company Announcements Platform Lodgement of Open Briefing

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Ridley Corporation Limited Level 10 12 Castlereagh Street Sydney, New South Wales 2000

Date of lodgement: 24-Sep-2003

Title: Open Briefing. Ridley. CEO on CSG Sale

Record of interview:

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Ridley Corporation Limited today announced an agreement by its 70-percent owned Ridley Inc. to sell the business and key assets of its loss-making subsidiary Cotswold Swine Genetics (CSG). In 2003, you wrote down the carrying value of CSG by $11.3 million, before tax and outside equity interests. What assets will remain with Ridley following the sale and what's the risk of further write-downs relating to the planned divestiture of these assets?

CEO Matthew Bickford-Smith

After the sale to PIC International, we'll be left with funds employed of approximately $6 million. These assets have already been written down to their recoverable value. We don't expect any further losses in disposing of them.

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What process is involved in disposing of the remaining CSG assets and when do you expect the process to be completed?

CEO Matthew Bickford-Smith

It's very much an orderly negotiation process with a number of parties that will occur over the next nine to 12 months. Also, there are a number of production leases that we'll progressively pay out or run down over that period.

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What conditions are attached to the CSG sale and what will be the effect of the sale on your cash flow in the current year ending June 2004?

CEO Matthew Bickford-Smith

The agreement with PIC includes the licensing rights to all CSG intellectual property and the right to market Cotswold genetics throughout Canada, the US, Mexico and Australia. We expect the overall impact of the sale and subsequent wind down on cash flow this year to be marginally positive.

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Given the swine industry accounts for roughly 35 percent of your volume sales in North America, is there any potential downside for this business in your not offering swine genetics products?

CEO Matthew Bickford-Smith

Certainly a large proportion of our feed business is based around swine producers and it was largely for that reason we got into the swine genetics business in the first place. The original idea was to offer the customer both nutritional products and swine genetics as part of a "package," but that hasn't proven to be successful, as evidenced by the losses in the business.

However, having sold the business to the major swine genetics business in the US, we don't expect any negative impact on our feed business. There are certain customers who currently buy both feed and swine genetics from us, particularly in Canada, but we expect to retain most of those customers.

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Given the agreed divestment timetable, what level of operating loss contribution do you expect from CSG in Ridley's accounts in the current year?

CEO Matthew Bickford-Smith

In respect of operating, divestment and other wind down costs relating to the CSG assets and contract obligations, we expect to record a loss during the year of about $2 million, after tax and outside equity interests.

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Thank you Matthew.

For more information about Ridley Corporation, visit www.ridley.com.au