Laguna Bay’s Woorndoo Aggregation for sale

A cropping farm in Victoria’s Western District has hit the market with a huge price tag. Full details here.

A cropping farm in Victoria’s Western District has been listed for sale with a huge asking price of $70 million.

The 3353ha property, Woorndoo Aggregation near Lake Bolac, is owned by the Laguna Bay Agricultural Fund.

Woorndoo Aggregation is a dryland cropping property suited to a range of intensive and broad hectare agriculture pursuits including winter cereals, oilseeds and pulse crops.

The property is being sold via expressions of interest, which will close on November 4.

It will be sold as whole or three separate assets and is being marketed by LAWD and Elders.

Laguna Bay last year sold the historic Banongill Station near Skipton in the Western District to a local consortium of farming families for about $80 million.

In 2019 it offloaded 12,000ha 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.

The Woorndoo aggregation is the latest in a string of high-profile Victorian farms or businesses to hit the market.

In August, US private equity firm Proterra Investment Partners listed its 22,500ha Corinella Group of properties in Victoria and South Australia as part of what is understood to be one of the biggest-ever offerings of prime farmland in southeast Australia.

The Corinella farms are located around Lake Bolac in Victoria’s Western District, north of Ararat and Stawell, around Navarre in the Wimmera and at Naracoorte in South Australia.

Just a few weeks later, Aware Super announced plans to sell its northern Victorian farming portfolio. Expected to fetch $150 million, the portfolio comprises one of Australia’s largest field tomato enterprises, a commercial Queen Garnet Plum orchard, irrigated certified organic land for the production of high value winter cereals and organic tomatoes, a sheep grazing enterprise and biodiversity zones presenting future carbon offset opportunities.

The Aware Super offering includes an impressive 9004ha of organic and conventional horticulture and broadacre cropping land, with an irrigated footprint of 3600ha, and 20,000 megalitres of water entitlements.