Brett Blundy puts Walhallow Aggregation back on the market after $250m deal falls through

A retail billionaire has put his massive one million hectare cattle station back on the market after a contract for the Northern Territory aggregation fell over.

Brett Blundy has put his Walhallow Aggregation back on the market.

Brett Blundy has put his massive Northern Territory cattle station back on the market after a Sydney-based fund manager failed to settle the contract.

The retail billionaire’s one million hectare Walhallow Aggregation had reportedly been sold in August for about $250m – a record.

However, Mr Blundy confirmed that the original contract had fallen over, and the aggregation remains on the market.

“It’s always disappointing when a transaction falls over but the original buyer couldn’t perform, so we move on. This is a very attractive asset which continues to generate strong buyer interest,” Mr Blundy said on Monday.

Sources in the industry say a fund connected to Sam Mitchell, who is the managing director of WealthCheck, had the property under contract and it would have been the entity’s maiden northern Australian cattle investment.

WealthCheck has a funds management arm which invests in the retail and wholesale markets covering residential, mining and rural properties across Australia. Mr Mitchell did not return phone calls.

Representatives for Mr Blundy’s investment firm, BBRC, and selling agents Colliers International would not comment.

The one million-hectare Walhallow Aggregation in the Northern Territory’s Barkly Tablelands region, currently owned by billionaire Brett Blundy.

The aggregation is made up of the 3580sq km Walhallow Station and 6454sq km Creswell Downs at the Barkly Tableland, east of Daly Waters, 994km from Darwin Port. It was being sold on a walk-in-walk-out basis including in excess of 61,000 head of Brahman cattle. It has been operating as one giant cattle station for more than 40 years.

All underbidders are now active in the dataroom and Colliers Agribusiness’ Rawdon Briggs, Jesse Manual, Leah Freney and James Beer are marketing the property through an expression of interest process with final bidding due on October 12.

Mr Briggs said the underbidders were a mixture of corporate investor, existing land owners in northern Australia, and net worth individuals in the city looking to diversity into agriculture.

“All bids are well over $200m which are record prices as well. There will be a new record, it just depends on who the new owner was,” he said.

“We are very confident and we have four or five bidders already there and we would welcome others who want to buy something of that scale. How often to you get a chance to buy one million hectares.”

The largest price for a single cattle station was $215m paid last year by Peter and Jane Hughes and family’s Hughes Grazing for the 438,000ha Gulf breeding operation Miranda Downs.

The Walhallow aggregation was originally purchased by Mr Blundy in 2015 for about $100m.

It is understood Mr Blundy’s decision to sell earlier this year was prompted by the strong demand for beef cattle assets.

Operating a low cost beef production model, Walhallow benefits from extensive development across much of the stations, with scope for further development to enhance carrying capacity. The highly improved properties feature efficient water, fencing and laneway systems with sealed road access for both live export and box beef supply chains.

The expansive floodout areas also have potential for cotton and grain production, making this investment suitable for a number of alternative future operations.

Originally published as Brett Blundy puts Walhallow Aggregation back on the market after $250m deal falls through