Gina Rinehart nears end of $300m cattle station portfolio sale

Tycoon Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture and joint-venture partner S. Kidman and Co have sold the bulk of a $300m portfolio of beef production assets.

Gina Rinehart, above. Picture: Hancock Prospecting

Tycoon Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture and joint venture partner S. Kidman and Co have sold off the bulk of a $300m portfolio of northern Australian beef production assets.

Local buyers have snapped up six out of the seven properties that were on offer, confirming the power of Australian purchasers whom have stepped up for major assets this year.

Just this week, US-backed private equity firm Proterra Investment Partners sold its Corinella Group of almost 50 farms covering 22,500ha in Victoria and SA for more than $360m. That portfolio was carved up among 27 different Australian buyers.

The Hancock/Kidman assets comprised seven individual stations occupying about 1.88m hectares across WA and the NT, carrying a beef cattle herd of about 108,500 head, plus progeny.

The portfolio also includes a feeding, export depot and farming operation near Katherine in the NT. The portfolio held the capacity to turn off up to 45,000 head of cattle per annum.

Hancock Agriculture boosted the water storage and distribution infrastructure and improved cattle herd quality before it put the seven assets on the block.

The offer was billed as an opportunity to buy a strategically constructed portfolio of assets at scale by agents Elders. The firm’s general manager real estate Tom Russo declined to comment.

In the latest trade, more than 300,000 hectares of the venture’s NT cattle country was sold off in transactions topping $60m.

The Brett family is picking up the 171,000ha Willeroo Station, north of Katherine, for more than $40m and the neighbouring Aroona Station has been bought by the DiGiorgio family for $22.7m.

The venture has exited profitability as it had picked up the pair of stations for more than $50m four years ago.

Hancock still holds its remaining substantial portfolio, which includes operations in Queensland, SA, NSW and the NT.

The venture has had a run of sales. In October, the pair sold Macumba and Innamincka stations in SA’s northeast to Central Australian pastoral identity Viv Oldfield. He has earlier picked up Kidman’s Ruby Plains Station in the Kimberley for about $70m.

The Nerrima Station, on the Fitzroy River in the West Kimberley, sold to Johnathan Emanuel for about $30m.

Now, just the Victoria River District cattle stations in the NT – Riveren and Inverway – remain to be sold. They span about 550,000ha, with a herd of 40,000 cattle.