Little family sell award-winning Darling Downs cotton farm, Wynola Aggregation at Brookstead, Queensland

After being held by a Queensland family for three generations, a blue-chip irrigated cotton enterprise has been snapped up by an Aussie buyer.

An award-winning Darling Downs cotton farm has been sold before auction with an Australian buyer snapping up the property.

The 640ha Wynola Aggregation in Queensland was listed for sale in May, with the 442ha Wynola farm, the 196ha Worrenda farm and the 149ha stand-alone property Mondamere scheduled to go under the hammer in July.

But an Australian buyer with existing farming interests in the Darling Downs region purchased the property for an undisclosed price beforethe scheduled auction.

The buyer secured the Wynola and Worrenda farms in the deal, while the Little family retained Mondamere, with some family members to live there.

The Little family have owned the aggregation for three generations, creating the irrigated cotton enterprise, but will now retire.

JLL’s directors of agribusiness Clayton Smith, Chris Holgar and sales executive James Mitchell handled the sale, securing a “very strong” result.

The 640ha Wynola Aggregation has been sold to an Australian buyer.

“We had significant interest from domestic and international buyers,” Mr Smith said.

“This is prime farming country and an absolute blue-chip and highly productive operation.”

Mr Smith said the current crops at Wynola and Worrenda are fallow, while the surface dams are full, meaning the new owners would hit the ground running with the late 2022 crops.

The Wynola Aggregation won the Highest Yielding Cotton Farm and other high-yielding prizes at the 2016 Toowoomba Show.

The aggregation is considered 97 per cent arable with 84 per cent, or 540ha, irrigatable.

Full water accounts total about 1279ML with secure groundwater entitlements totalling 549ML.

Australian cotton farms have been in hot demand this year with several major deals completed so far.

In April the Kooba Ag portfolio, west of Hay, spanning 20,000ha and includes 17,000ML of supplementary water, was sold in a deal worth about $63m.

While in February North American agricultural investment group Hancock Agricultural Investment Group sold Queensland’s Kalanga cotton aggregation to a family farming operation in a deal worth about $80m.

Earlier this year the renowned Cubbie Station was purchased by Australian agricultural fund Macquarie Asset Management in a mammoth deal.