Laguna Bay fund’s Woorndoo aggregation sells to Shippen and Ross families for $70 million

A large slice of cropping land in Victoria’s sought-after Western District will transfer from foreign to Australian family hands in a landmark deal.

The Woorndoo aggregation was advertised as suitable for a range of cropping pursuits.

Two Australian farming families have snapped up a huge slice of American-owned cropping land in Victoria’s Western District for about $70 million.

The Weekly Times can reveal the US-backed Laguna Bay Agricultural Fund has sold its 3353-hectare Woorndoo aggregation near Lake Bolac – in separate deals – to Ian and Camilla Shippen from Moulamein in southern NSW, and Clinton Ross, who has significant farming interests in western Victoria.

Selling agents Rob Rickard from Elders and Danny Thomas from LAWD today failed to respond to The Weekly Times’ requests for comment on the deal. It is understood the Shippens will take the southern part of the aggregation and Mr Ross the northern.

Mr Ross said the purchase would complement his existing Brookvale Holdings cropping operations at Avoca, Minyip and on the Moolort Plains between Bendigo and Ballarat, and “hopefully puts a bit of diversity into our business”. Mr Shippen could not be reached for comment.

When listed for sale in October, the Woorndoo aggregation was advertised as a dryland cropping property suited to a range of intensive and broadacre agriculture pursuits including winter cereals, oilseeds and pulse crops.

It is the Shippens’ second major purchase of Victorian farmland in recent years. In 2018 they paid about $37 million for the iconic Victorian Western District grazing property Mt Fyans at Dundonnell.

The 3353ha Woorndoo aggregation near Lake Bolac was offered by the Laguna Bay Agricultural Fund.

They bought the 5900-hectare property — one of Victoria’s largest — from the West Australian-based, Chinese-backed Harmony Agriculture and Food Company. In addition to their Merino operation at Moulamein, the Shippens run a crossbred sheep enterprise at Wagga Wagga under their Banyandah Pastoral banner.

The Woorndoo sale marks another step in Laguna Bay’s selldown of Australian agricultural assets. Last year it offloaded the historic Banongill Station near Skipton in the Western District to a local consortium of farming families for about $80 million.

In 2019 it sold 12,000 hectares of almond plantations near Robinvale in northern Victoria and almost 90,000 megalitres of high-security water for $860 million in one of the biggest agricultural transactions in Australia’s history. The water component of the deal was worth $490 million. The land and water was purchased by Canada’s PSP Investments.

Woorndoo is the second major aggregation in Australia to be purchased by locals off foreign owners this spring. Earlier this month, The Weekly Times revealed that a 6000-hectare slice of the historic Woolnorth aggregation near Smithton, in northwest Tasmania, had been sold by the controversial Chinese-owned Van Dairy Limited to TRT Pastoral Group, owned by the Melbourne-based Roberts-Thomson family.

The deal was believed to be one of the richest in Tasmania’s history and one of the single-biggest sales to domestic family interests ever in Australia.