How to buy an island: Chinese snap up Queensland’s South Molle Island

ANOTHER piece of Queensland’s paradise has been bought by Chinese investors following the multimillion-dollar sale of this Whitsundays icon.

South Molle Island: aerial view.

A CHINESE company has snapped up a second resort island in the Whitsundays.

Shanghai-based China Capital Investment Group was today confirmed as the purchaser of South Molle Island.

The price is understood to be around $25 million.

In February last year, the same company paid $30 million to buy nearby Daydream Island Resort and Spa -- previously known as West Molle) from former vitamins and natural health supplements king Vaughan Bullivant.

With less than two kilometres separating the two islands, the new owners are expected to run them as complimentary destinations.

“It may be that it is redeveloped as a more luxurious offering,’’ sales agent Peter Harper from JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group said.

South Molle Island is thought to have been sold for $25 million.

The existing 188-room resort on South Molle island is likely to be revamped or rebuilt.

The island, which is subject to a perpetual lease, has 12 hectares of waterfront land available for development and a 600-metre north-facing beach.

Mr Harper said the deal was a shot in the arm for the Whitsundays and north Queensland.

“The sale is another example of the international investment community’s confidence in the long term outlook for Australia’s, and in particular Queensland’s, leisure tourism markets,’’ he said.

“We certainly look forward to watching the Whitsundays further grow with the future transformation of South Molle Island, completion of a range of other tourism related projects, increases in airline services, and continually evolving tourism demand source markets both domestically and abroad.”

China is Queensland’s fastest-growing source of international tourists.

And Chinese companies are investing heavily in the state’s tourism industry.

William Han’s White Horse Group has plans to redevelop Lindeman Island, also in the Whitsundays, into a $600 million eco-resort and China’s wealthiest man Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wandu group is building the $1 billion three-tower Jewel development at Surfers Paradise.

Competition to secure the island was strong, Mr Harper said. “The sale process for South Molle Island was completed in less than two months and attracted considerable interest from a range of investors types who emanated from numerous countries across Asia, together with a number of domestic groups.”

It is understood that previous owner, Queensland tourism entrepreneur Craig Ross, plans to focus on other projects including a Daintree resort.

The sale will come as some relief to the Queensland Government which, alarmed that 11 of the 23 island resorts on leasehold land on the Great Barrier Reef were closed, earlier this month launched a taskforce to investigate why -- -- and what can be done to get them re-vamped and re-opened.