Corporate agricultural players offload properties to keen buyers

Big corporate players are firing the rural property market, with AgJournal revealing how the top end is cashing in.

Mt Falcon at Tooma, NSW, is on the market.

THERE’S movement at the station — and it’s the top end of town cashing in.

Major corporate agriculture players have moved swiftly in recent months to offload signature farms and portfolios across Australia in the face of strong buyer demand and before an expected softening of the rural property market.

Pastoral giant Clark and Tait this month announced plans to sell its seven stations in western Queensland totalling more than 530,000 hectares just days after cotton business Auscott listed its 17,034-hectare Midkin aggregation and ginning facilities at Moree in NSW for a reported $300 million.

The offerings came less than a month after Chinese-backed Rifa Salutary announced it would offload its 14 properties in NSW and Victoria, totalling 44,000 hectares. Agents say this portfolio, which includes the 2400-hectare Blackwood Station at Skipton in Victoria and the 22,500-hectare Cooplacurripa Station at Gloucester in NSW, could realise “north of $150 million”.

ANZ Agribusiness Insights head Michael Whitehead says the rural property market is particularly strong in the face of drought over large swathes of Australia, uncertainty over water and global trade tensions.

“You are continuing to see activity but there is always healthy caution,” Whitehead says.

“Australia remains — particularly with the trade tensions between the US and China and other areas — low political risk.”

“We may have a variable climate but investors know that and we continue to have a quality product. Your offshore investors aren’t going to be that interested in a smaller operation so they are going to look to the medium-to-larger ones and they are going to look to consolidate opportunities.”

Inglis Rural Property sales manager Sam Triggs says vendors are making the most of strong property prices. “(They) have seen the growth in the market in the past 18 months and, given there are a few signs that things might be going to plateau, they are looking to capitalise,” Triggs says. “The market has had a big jump and it’s going to be hard for it to keep going at the rate it is.”

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Other major holdings on the market include Chinese-owned Union Agriculture’s Mt Falcon Station at Tooma in NSW, which has an asking price of up to $15 million, and US-based Harvard Endowment Funds’ Riverina irrigation farms Wyadra and Cowl Cowl at Hillston and Newmarket Station at Hay. The Harvard properties are said to be worth more than $100 million.

In northern Australia, the sell-down of Consolidated Pastoral Company continues, having offloaded several stations in the past year including the 245,550-hectare Ucharonidge Station at Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory for about $30 million.