Toowoomba company Wagners Properties buys $15.7m in land in Torrington, Darling Heights and Pinkenba in 2022

One of Toowoomba’s wealthiest families has been busy buying up land across southeast Queensland, forking out more than $15m in the process. Here’s why they’re doing it.

Toowoomba company Wagners has revealed why it paid more than $15.7m for agricultural and industrial land across southeast Queensland in 2022.

Wagners Properties, one of the private firms owned by the powerful Wagner family, has been busy snapping up more than 22 hectares across five parcels of land this year.

While four properties are in the key Toowoomba residential growth areas of Torrington and Darling Heights, the company also paid a whopping $7m in March for a two-hectare site on Main Beach Road in Pinkenba.

The land is just metres from Brisbane Airport and not far from where the proposed Brisbane quarantine hub would have been built before being scrapped.

Wagner Corporation, another arm of the family business, was the landlord and lead contractor for the Wellcamp quarantine facility that was mothballed by the state government.

It marks the most significant land acquisition Wagners Properties has undertaken in years.

Director Denis Wagner said the Pinkenba purchase had nothing to do with the planned quarantine hub and was instead in service of its nearby cement wharf, which is owned by the publicly-listed Wagners Holding Company.

“It’s an industrial block of land, we bought it to store goods (that are) brought over through the wharf,” he said.

“The purpose of that block is for bulk storage.”

Mr Wagner said the Toowoomba properties, worth about $8.7m and 20 hectares, were bought with a long-term view of turning them into residential subdivisions.

“There’s no intention to develop them in the short term — it’s landbanking for the future,” he said.

“(Darling Heights) has got a big future ahead of it — it’s still a while off (creating housing estates there).”

While the Wagners have the largest amount of future residential land in Torrington, property developer Clive Berghofer dominates Darling Heights and Kearneys Spring.