Business broker, regional Queensland

At a glance

The business base

The 57 councils held 111,008 actively trading businesses at 30 June 2025, up 2.1 per cent over 2024-25. By sub region that is Far North Queensland 26,108, Wide Bay Burnett 25,098, Central Queensland 19,616, North Queensland 17,723, Mackay Isaac Whitsunday 17,547 and the Central West and outback 4,916. Growth here runs behind the south east, where Ipswich grew 6.4 per cent and Logan 5.9 per cent on the same extract. Fraser Coast at 5.6 per cent is the one regional council that behaves like a south east growth corridor, and nine councils went backwards over the year: Woorabinda, Cherbourg, Weipa, Longreach, Blackall Tambo, Hinchinbrook, Cassowary Coast, Burdekin and Douglas.

What is over represented

Agriculture and mining across the whole region, and one division that carries the mining services story. Agriculture, forestry and fishing was 22,373 businesses at 30 June 2024, 20.57 per cent of the base against 8.13 per cent for Queensland, an index of 2.53, and it is the ABS main industry in 31 of the 57 councils. Mining runs at 1.74. Then look inside. Mackay Isaac Whitsunday records other services, the division that holds repair and maintenance, at 1,741 businesses and 10.07 per cent of its base, an index of 1.81, the highest of any division outside agriculture and mining in this research. Far North Queensland is the only sub region where accommodation and food services runs above the state share, at 1.35. North Queensland is the only one where health care does, at 1.15. The Central West runs agriculture at 4.91.

Where the businesses are

In the coastal cities and around the industrial precincts and ports. Cairns held 15,166 businesses at 30 June 2025, Townsville 13,122, Mackay 11,184, Bundaberg 7,542, Fraser Coast 7,104, Rockhampton 5,723, Gympie 5,236, Whitsunday 4,284 and Gladstone 4,238. The named precincts are Paget Industrial Estate at Mackay, described by the Queensland Government as home to over 500 mining and manufacturing businesses and the largest mining services industrial precinct in the southern hemisphere, the Gracemere Industrial Area at Rockhampton, the Lansdown Eco-Industrial Precinct at Townsville and the Cityport precinct in Cairns. Ten of Queensland’s twelve declared State Development Areas sit inside this page, from Galilee Basin at 105,996 hectares down to Tropical North at about 14 hectares.

Who the buyers are

Rarely someone down the road, and the arithmetic proves it. Population density across the 57 councils is 1.03 persons per square kilometre, against 176.30 across the eleven south east Queensland councils, and 0.06 in the Central West and outback. There were 8,763 businesses turning over $2 million or more across the whole region at 30 June 2024, of which Townsville held 1,202, Cairns 1,199 and Mackay 979, while Blackall Tambo held 28, Winton 20 and Barcoo 3. Non employing businesses were 60.3 per cent of the register and only 2.98 per cent employed 20 or more people. So the buyer pool is statewide at least and usually national, a single inspection costs a buyer a day and a flight, and for an owner operated business in a town of 3,000 people the buyer is also buying a move.

The local friction

Fifty seven councils, fifty seven planning schemes and fifty seven fee registers, and two approvals that behave in opposite directions. Mackay Regional Council states in terms that food licences are not transferable and that the proposed new licence holder must apply before starting trade. Rockhampton Regional Council publishes the opposite for the environment: if you sell a business that includes an environmental authority you will need to transfer it to the new owner, subject to suitable operator registration and a fee. The same council states that development permits for environmentally relevant activities are not transferable, because the conditions apply to the land. Add a Cairns local law prohibiting touting with no permit available, council administered trade waste in Cairns, and land inside a State Development Area assessed by the Coordinator-General rather than by the council scheme.

What decides the price

Evidence, because the local comparables a buyer would normally lean on are not there. An appraisal here is built from the business’s own numbers and from sector evidence drawn elsewhere, and you should be told that at the outset rather than be disappointed by the absence later. After that, three things. Whether the town is the customer concentration, because in Isaac 18.9 per cent of employee jobs were mining in 2021-22 and in Weipa 20.7 per cent. Whether the event years in your profit and loss are explained rather than normalised away, because the Queensland Reconstruction Authority was still recording 250 damaged properties across Cairns, Cassowary Coast, Hinchinbrook and Townsville more than a year after the January and February 2025 tropical low. And whether the business runs without you, because 60.3 per cent of the register employs nobody at all.