ASX-listed Centuria is leading the local institutional investor push into “protective cropping” agricultural assets after snapping up a second major vegetable growing glasshouse facility in Port Augusta.

The fund manager’s unlisted Centuria Agricultural Fund (CAF) paid $70 million for the 246-hectare property on the Princes Highway, about 300 kilometres north of Adelaide, leased to Sundrop Farms, one of the country’s biggest growers of truss tomatoes.