Australian investment firm buys into equine airfreight company IRT

An Australian private equity firm has invested in International Racehorse Transport (IRT), a global equine logistics company founded by the late Quentin Wallace more than five decades ago.

Sydney-based Crescent Capital has acquired a significant interest in IRT after buying out the Wallace family’s share of the equine airfreight business in recent weeks.

UK-born Wallace, who died in June aged 77, established IRT 54 years ago with the equine airfreight company becoming a market leader with offices in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Germany and the US.

IRT managing director Chris Burke, director of operations Lachlan Ford, and New Zealand managing director Richard Cole remain shareholders in the business alongside Crescent Capital, an alternative asset manager founded 25 years ago.

“With the unfortunate passing of Quentin Wallace, we were keen to bring on board a high-quality strategic partner to invest alongside us in the business to support IRT’s and FPAS’s (First Point Animal Services) ongoing growth,” Burke told The Straight. 

“This will enable us to continue expanding and improving the service we offer to our customers, as we have done continuously for the past 54 years. 

“It is very much business as usual with myself, Lachie Ford and Richard Cole still active owners leading the business.”

Miles Advisory Partners acted for the shareholders of IRT in reaching a deal with Crescent Capital, which invests across the Australia and New Zealand private equity markets as well as in private credit and in listed equities.

Crescent Capital declined to comment when asked this week about its new affiliation with IRT.

It’s understood that about 70 per cent of IRT’s business is the transporting of thoroughbreds and standardbreds around the world, but the equestrian market is seen as a growth area, particularly in the US and Europe.

At the time of Wallace’s death, Burke paid tribute to the IRT founder, calling it the end of an era.

“Sometimes people miss the fact that the whole shuttle stallion business and introduction of northern hemisphere stallions to the southern hemisphere was all down to the innovation he put into the industry,” Burke said of Wallace. 

“I think people take it for granted a little. He was well ahead of his time and, to think he was doing this in 1972, it says it all. 

“When I look at the pedigrees of horses in Australia, in many ways, he’s touched every page. He leaves an extraordinary legacy.”

Among the countless stallions IRT has transported over the decades, which started with Deep River and Green God in 1974, the most remarkable would be More Than Ready who shuttled to Vinery Stud in the Hunter Valley on 19 occasions.

IRT’s first flights from Australia and New Zealand to Singapore and Malaysia began in 1976, and four years later, Wallace’s freight business transported that year’s Melbourne Cup winner, the Colin Hayes-trained and Robert Sangster-owned Belldale Ball, out from the UK

IRT also had the duty of transporting The Moscow Circus horses from Russia to the UK and Australia as well as to Singapore and Hong Kong while it became an official transport agent for the Hong Kong Jockey Club in 1999.

As well as organising the cargo flights for the horses, IRT also manages the pre-quarantine and post-quarantine requirements for the various jurisdictions it services.

In Australasia, it faces competition from Equine International Airfreight and New Zealand Bloodstock Airfreight, which is owned by the auction house’s proprietor Sir Peter Vela.