Cubbie Station, Upton Farms and Kooba Ag: Autumn’s biggest Aussie farm sales 2022

Neighbour-to-neighbour acquisitions, cattle farming royalty and cropping gems have dominated the major deals in the past few months.

More than half a billion dollars worth prime Australian farmland has changed hands during a bumper Autumn selling seaon.

Neighbour-to-neighbour acquisitions, cattle farming royalty and cropping gems have dominated Aussie farm sales in recent months.

One of the largest deals this Autumn was the sale of Australian cotton producing powerhouse, Cubbie Station by Chinese owners, Shandong Ruyi, to the Macquarie Asset Management.

Macquarie Asset Management acquired a 49 per cent share in the station in 2019, before taking 100 per cent ownership in the March deal.

Shandong Ruyi purchased the 90,000ha station in a controversial deal in 2012 for $232 million.

Cubbie Station was sold by Chinese owners, Shandong Ruyi, to the Macquarie Asset Management recently.

Australian billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart also made headlines selling the final two cattle stations from her mammoth $300m listing in 2021, to Aussie cattle farming giants Peter and Jane Hughes.

The sale of the Inverway and Riveren stations, in the Northern Territory, was completed in April for a reported $100 million.

Further south, a rurally-based family operation with existing beef properties also secured the pristine Upton Farms aggregation, at Niangala, NSW, in a deal worth more than $80m.

Gina Rinehart via Hancock Agriculture sold the Riveren (pictured) and Inverway stations to Peter and Jane Hughes.

Two major NSW cropping farms were also sold with Western District and the Riverina farmers, JHW Paterson and Son paying $63 million in late April to buy the 20,000ha Kooba Pty Ltd aggregation at Hay.

Meanwhile, agricultural manager goFARM sold Yarrabee Park, near Morundah in the Murray region of NSW, to Canada’s PSP Investments’ Daybreak Cropping in a $60m-plus deal.

The Kooba Pty Ltd aggregation at Hay had mostly been used for cotton production.

Neighbour-to-neighbour acquisitions under $25 million also proved to be some of the most common transactions, according to NAB’s regional and agribusiness horizons report.

NAB executive regional and agribusiness Julie Rynski said producers were looking locally, inter-regionally and interstate for more land.

“Favourable commodity prices and the low cost of credit have added confidence to buyers, in turn pushing up underlying values,” Ms Rynski said.

“As a result, we’ve seen the median price paid per rural hectare increase by up to 20 per cent over the past 12 months to April 2022, with many regions experiencing even stronger growth.”

goFARM sold the 11,000ha Yarrabee Park aggregation to PSP Investments’ Daybreak Cropping earlier this year.

In Victoria, some local buyers have paid premium prices to secure some of the highest quality cropping farms in the state.

In April a Noradjuha family farm was sold for a Wimmera land price record with the 129ha Lowan Estate sold to an undisclosed local buyer for more than $36,200 per hectare while the 185ha Didi-Bahini holding was sold to a separate local buyer with a winning bid of about $30,878 a hectare at auction.

Last month, two lots, totalling 964ha of the 1328ha Laen cropping portfolio, were sold to multiple local buyers in a top-dollar deal worth about $13m combined.