ApartmentsVanessa CrollTue 09 Jun 26
Olympians’ Parmalat Buy Clears Way for South Brisbane 2032 Precinct
A Brisbane riverfront milk factory dating back to the 1930s is being folded into a major Games-era precinct, backed by two former Olympians and a fresh planning application.
Stockwell has acquired the former Paul’s Milk Factory sites—long known as the Parmalat site—from Lactalis, adding the South Brisbane factory land to 108 Montague Road, the surplus warehouse site it bought from the French dairy giant last year.
Lactalis put 108 Montague Road on the market in 2024 as part of a review of non-manufacturing assets, while maintaining its operating factory at 65 Montague Road.
The deal lifts Stockwell’s Kurilpa peninsula holding to more than 5 hectares.
It gives the company a major position in the old industrial strip between West End and South Bank, where Brisbane is pushing for more housing, hospitality and public space before 2032.
Plans lodged for the first stage at 108 Montague Road would deliver a 30-level tower with 299 apartments on the former Paul’s Milk site near Montague Road and Boundary Street, according to media reports.
Designed for owner-occupiers, the first stage would be followed by a build-to-rent building with studios, one and two-bedroom apartments, then a 400-room hotel.
Across several South Brisbane holdings, the wider proposal has been reported to include 12 residential towers and almost 200 food, beverage and entertainment venues.
Kurilpa now sits inside a Provisional Priority Development Area, a temporary state planning pathway declared on May 29 to accelerate housing and mixed-use development on under-used land.
Earlier Kurilpa planning changes had already lifted housing capacity in the riverside precinct, while requiring taller residential buildings to address design, flood resilience and community-benefit outcomes.
Stockwell said the former Paul’s land would extend South Bank and the Cultural Precinct, linking West End, South Brisbane, the CBD, Suncorp Stadium, Olympic stadiums and Queen’s Wharf, with seven bridges and three train stations within walking distance.
Mark Stockwell won three swimming medals for Australia at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where Tracy Stockwell, then Tracy Caulkins, won gold for the US in the 200m individual medley, 400m individual medley and 4x100m medley relay.
Mark became managing director of the family company in 1994, three years before Stockwell made its first West End investment.
It has since built a local portfolio across apartment, retail and mixed-use projects.
“Our first investment in West End was in 1997. Since that time, I have always looked at the Paul’s Milk Factory sites as the prize development site of Brisbane,” Stockwell said.
“This is a one-in-100-year opportunity as the milk factory started its life in 1930.”
Stockwell has pitched the riverfront land as a long-term mixed-use precinct, with temporary 2032 venues for sport climbing and skateboarding proposed as part of a wider public-realm and entertainment program.
Plans also include a river stage, community spaces and the Brisbane Beer Mile, a hospitality trail under the rail line from the Convention Centre through Fish Lane towards Suncorp Stadium.
Stockwell said arts, performance, entertainment and nightlife would be supported by places to live, shop, work and recreate.
“In 2032, Brisbane will become the centre of the world as the host of the 2032 Olympics,” Stockwell said.
Lactalis announced in January it would close the South Brisbane milk factory after decades of dairy manufacturing on the riverfront, saying the site’s location and infrastructure no longer aligned with a modern production network.
The earlier 108 Montague Road sale covered a 1.697ha site across 17 lots, marketed with potential for 189,000sq m of gross floor area.
