Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture purchases Split Rock Dairy

A 1980ha northern NSW dairy farm will convert to Wagyu cattle after it was sold to Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture.

Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has added another asset to her reshaped rural property portfolio, snapping up a 1980ha northern NSW dairy.

Hancock Agriculture has purchased the Split Rock Dairy, located north of Manila near Tamworth in northeast NSW, the company announced in a statement.

Details of the off-market sale remain confidential, but it is understood the Split Rock Dairy property will complement other backgrounding properties within the Hancock Agriculture portfolio.

Spilt Rock Dairy, to be named Buena Vista, was owned in an equity partnership which included three investors and Australian dairy industry champion Robert Cooper.

The original farm was owned by three brothers, before they and Mr Cooper started a new company 10 years ago.

Spilt Rock Dairy was expanded during their tenure from 1400ha to 3230ha, increasing cow numbers from 400 to 1200.

The property includes irrigated and dryland cropping with 366ha under irrigation via 11 pivots.

Hancock Prospecting executive chair Gina Rinehart and Hancock Agriculture CEO Adam Giles in London this year. Picture: Lionel Derimais

“The purchase of this property is consistent with the Hancock Agriculture strategy of acquiring properties to support growth in our annual turn-off of 2GR branded Fullblood and Pure Bred Wagyu. We thank the vendor for facilitating the sales process and we wish them well,” Hancock Agriculture said in a statement.

Ms Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture has undergone a significant restructure in the past two years or so, including the sale of 10 of the country’s most famous cattle stations from the S. Kidman and Co cattle station empire.

In the next phase of its restructure, Hancock Agriculture purchased the 8731ha Ottley Station west of Inverell in northern NSW and the 10,029ha Moolan Downs Aggregation in the Western Downs region of Queensland for about $80 million earlier this year.

S. Kidman and Co and Hancock Agriculture chief executive Adam Giles said the restructuring of the S. Kidman portfolio was to focus on selling the higher value Santa Gertrudis cattle and Wagyu-Santa Gertrudis crossbreeds.

“What we had to do was realign some of those property portfolios that we had to better target property that met the needs and demands of the cattle that we wanted to see go into the box product,” Mr Giles told The Australian Ag Podcast in July.

“Part of that strategy was working through a box beef program. With Kidman a lot of it was going over the hook, but now it is going into a box beef strategy.

“So we now have a lot of property in the New England region and southern Queensland. You’ll start to see some acquisitions for Kidman into the future.”