Toowoomba at a glance

At a glance

The business base

The six councils held 33,313 actively trading businesses at 30 June 2025, up 619 businesses (1.9 per cent) over 2024-25. Toowoomba holds 17,994 of them. Western Downs holds 5,215, Southern Downs 4,477, Maranoa 2,638, Goondiwindi 2,047 and Balonne 942. Balonne is the only local government area researched for this site whose business count went backwards over that year, down 3 businesses on a base of 945. Those 33,313 businesses sit across 167,075.2868 square kilometres, which is more than fifty times the combined area of the Sunshine Coast and Noosa councils. Maranoa Regional Council alone, at 58,719.3449 square kilometres, is larger than the land area of Tasmania.

What is over represented

Agriculture, and it is not close. ABS records agriculture, forestry and fishing as the main industry, being the division with the largest number of actively trading businesses, in every one of the six councils at 30 June 2025, including Toowoomba, a city of 184,377 people. At 30 June 2024 the six held 10,369 agricultural businesses, 31.7 per cent of their combined base against 8.1 per cent for Queensland, an index of 3.92. By council the share runs Balonne 52.9 per cent, Maranoa 52.2 per cent, Western Downs 47.1 per cent, Goondiwindi 44.1 per cent, Southern Downs 37.0 per cent and Toowoomba 20.4 per cent. Those 10,369 businesses are 25.0 per cent of every agriculture, forestry and fishing business in Queensland, held by councils carrying 6.4 per cent of the state’s business base.

Where the businesses are

Toowoomba first, then a string of highway towns. Ruthven Street carries the New England Highway through the Toowoomba central business district, with Margaret, Russell, Neil, Bridge and Herries streets crossing it. Grand Central sits at Dent and Margaret streets and Clifford Gardens at James Street and Anzac Avenue, 1.5 kilometres west of the CBD, where James Street is also the Warrego Highway. West of the city, InterLinkSQ at Charlton holds an intermodal terminal and industrial park with 3 kilometres of frontage to the West Moreton rail line, and Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport and Wellcamp Business Park sit at Wellcamp. Beyond that the activity is in named towns: Oakey, Pittsworth, Millmerran, Crows Nest, Dalby, Chinchilla, Miles, Tara, Wandoan, Jandowae, Warwick, Stanthorpe, Allora, Goondiwindi, Inglewood, Texas, St George, Dirranbandi, Roma, Mitchell, Injune and Surat.

Who the buyers are

Frequently someone from another district, which changes how the sale has to be run. Across 167,075 square kilometres there are 770 businesses employing 20 or more people, and 477 of those are in the Toowoomba local government area. Outside Toowoomba the whole Darling Downs and South West holds 293 of them, Maranoa 36 and Balonne 17. Non employing businesses were 66.4 per cent of the combined register at 30 June 2024. Professional, scientific and technical services runs at a combined index of 0.50, so the accountants, engineers and advisers a transaction needs are frequently not local either. Build the process to reach buyers outside the district from day one, and make the information good enough that a buyer can form a view before they get in a car or on a plane.

The local friction

Six councils, six planning schemes, six fee registers and six assessment queues. A buyer who owns a business in Dalby and buys one in Warwick deals with two councils and two sets of paperwork. Toowoomba Regional Council states that when taking over the ownership of a previously licensed food business you must apply for a new licence before commencing trade, decides within 30 days, and expires food licences on 30 September each year. Trade waste here is a council function, not a water utility function, which is the reverse of every south east Queensland council area. Goondiwindi Regional Council states that re-establishing an abandoned use, or significantly increasing the intensity or scale of a use, is a material change of use. And water is an entitlement regime under the Water Act 2000 that has no coastal equivalent.

What decides the price

Whether a buyer can separate the season from the management. Combined gross value of agricultural production across the six councils was $3,629.8 million in 2020-21, so farm income sets the revenue of the businesses that sell to farms. A seller here will usually have at least one bad year in the last five and often one exceptional year. Present five years or more rather than three, name the season and the commodity prices against each year, separate drought assistance, grants and insurance recoveries from trading revenue, and split cyclical revenue from recurring revenue. After that, distance. Freight in, freight out, service call travel, overnight costs and machinery downtime are all higher here, and they belong in the profit and loss as named lines rather than buried in overheads.