Sale of Queensland Energy Assets

The Queensland Government last week announced the sale of the government-owned Sun Retail, a major part of Energex’s retail operation.

Sun Retail was sold to Origin Energy for $1.2 billion. Origin outbid TRUenergy and AGL to secure the asset.

The acquisition of Sun Retail nearly doubles the size of Origin’s retail energy business and increases Origin’s share of the retail market to about 23 per cent.

Sun Retail has about 833,000 mass market and small business customers, mostly located in the high-growth corridor of south east Queensland.

Sun Gas, part of Energex’s natural gas operations, was sold to AGL for $75million. Sun Gas is the second largest Queensland gas retailer.

The $1.3 billion total raised by the sale has been marked by Premier Beattie for the Future Fund and allocated for major infrastructure projects around water and clean-coal technology research, and for regional projects including ports and rail.