Simon Gartner and family’s inside story of $360m Corinella Aggregation sale

In 2004 the Gartner family sold off a section of their South Australian farmland, and in 2021 they had the chance to buy it back.

For the Gartner family, farming in the southeast corner of South Australia is their passion, pride and careers.

Simon Gartner, 53, has been a farmer for all of his working life, carrying on the legacy and work of his father.

The family owns 1500ha in the Maaoupe area, 14km northwest of Penola, where they run 2500 ewes, with 1200ha allocated for mixed cropping.

His three sons Jack, Sam and Brad work full time on the farm, managing crops and running livestock.

It is this generational commitment to their work that sparked the Garnters’ interest in forming a syndicate with 11 local farmers, who joined together to purchase part of the Corinella Aggregation, which sold for a total of $360m.

“When I first heard about it and that it was open to offers I got a call from another local farmer and he said we should try and get together to get involved in the sale,” Mr Gartner said.

“We were lucky to get Tom Pearce involved and he took the time to get the 11 farmers together.”

For the Gartners, a 180ha parcel of land was of particular interest.

“Dad sold it in 2004 and we always had our eyes on it,” Mr Gartner said.

“We had a heap of rain in the early 1990s and you couldn’t run sheep on it anymore so Dad decided to sell it and the homestead.

“Another farmer in the area bought it and it has been passed through about three different hands since then.”

With a special connection to the land, the Gartners saw this syndicate as the perfect way to reconnect to their old home.

“To buy the property means a lot to us,” Mr Gartner said.

“It is where me and my wife lived when we first got married. I loved that house,” he said.

“And with the boys working full time we are all still heavily involved.”

With the Gartners next generation committing to a farming future, Mr Gartner decided now was the time to invest further and expand their operation.

“What better time to buy?” he said.

“Things are really good for farming at the moment and it is a good time to move forward with interest rates low and land values rising.”

Across Australia it is not just the Gartners who are deciding now is the right time to expand their family farming operations, with others also becoming involved in smaller slices of multimillion dollar deals.

Most notably a 6000-hectare parcel of the historic Woolnorth aggregation near Smithton, in northwest Tasmania, was snapped up by TRT Pastoral’s Tim Roberts-Thomson.

“This is incredible country,” Mr Roberts-Thomson told The Weekly Times.

“To get this type of scale in northwest Tasmania is just unheard of. It’s a real coup.”

The deal was worth more than $120 million.

Later in 2021 a farming family operation expanded their operation after paying almost $20m to get their hands on a 1486ha property at Edenhope.

With market conditions in a sweet spot, the Close family from Apsley paid up to continue their expansive Merino operation.

In November 2021, a syndicate was also the method for two Australian families to secure the Woorndoo aggregation in a landmark $70m deal.

Ian and Camilla Shippen, Banyandah Pastoral.

In separate deals Ian and Camilla Shippen, from Moulamein in southern NSW, and Clinton Ross, who has significant farming interests in western Victoria, purchased sections of the aggregation to expand their own operations.

Having never been involved in a syndicate before, Mr Gartner highly commended the way it allowed local farmers to work together to buy back land that was once in their own hands.

“It was a great feeling to be involved with other families, and being local everyone knows one another very well,” he said.

“It took some working out what land suited what people, but in the end we mostly took the blocks closer to us.

“It is good to have it back and things are very positive at the moment.

“It is good to see a lot of the young families stay local and for families to continue it on.”