Olam Orchards, Webster Limited, Lawson Grains: The top 50 farm sales of the Aussie rural property boom

Australian farm values soared to record heights in recent years thanks to some record-breaking deals. See the list.

For the better part of three years, a perfect storm of market conditions unleashed the family farming enterprise as a dominant buyer of farmland in Australia.

Record low cost of borrowing, near-record commodity prices and favourable seasonal conditions had the nation’s rural property market whipped into a frenzy, as existing land values were smashed by buyers desperate to expand.

LAWD senior director Danny Thomas said the rural property boom was the “most remarkable time in his professional career”.

“In a normal market you’d see two to four strong parties bidding against each other for a property, but during that time we had eight or ten parties chasing many assets,” he said.

“We saw value increases of 20, 25, even 30 per cent year-on-year with so many buyers chasing so few opportunities.”

Several family farming giants made their move during the boom, including Hughes Pastoral which purchased the Miranda Downs Station and Riveren and Inverway stations in separate deals for upwards of $250 million combined.

Corporate players traded their assets, such as the North American-based Proterra Investment Partners selling the $100 million Vaucluse Estate in Tasmania, while also offloading the $360 million Corinella portfolio of cropping farms in western Victoria and South Australia to 27 different Australian purchasers.

Canada’s PSP Investments were also a major player, purchasing well in excess of $2 billion worth of Australian farmland assets including almond orchards at Robinvale ($860 million), the Webster Limited portfolio ($854 million) and Auscott Limited ($600 million).

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart also took the opportunity to offload almost a dozen cattle stations from her S. Kidman portfolio as she looks to reinvest in east coast property and expand Hancock Agriculture’s 2GR wagyu herd.

ASX-listed farmland darling Rural Funds Group, the nation’s fourth largest agricultural investor by value, added to its holdings paying New York-based investment company Rohatyn Group $68.8 million for the Kaiuroo Aggregation on the Mackenzie River in central Queensland.

In late 2020 it also purchased sugar cane farms in Maryborough for more than $80 million with the intention to progressively convert them to macadamia orchards.

“The macadamia developments are progressing well - 1000ha of the developments are complete and the next 2000ha are budgeted to be complete by financial year 2025,” a Rural Funds Group spokesperson said.

Canada’s PSP Investments purchased 12,000 hectares of almond orchards at Robinvale from Olam Orchards (Singapore) in 2020.

“Rural Funds Group is likely to continue investing in sectors already present within the portfolio – particularly those where Australia has a comparative advantage and Rural Funds Management can identify productivity or higher and better use development opportunities.”

The spokesman said RFG had benefitted from higher asset valuations - particularly in the cattle sector - over the past few years, but that also meant it needed to be “more cautious” on future acquisitions to “ensure that additional purchases meet our internal return requirements for our investors”.

“Fortunately, Rural Funds Group has accumulated a significant development pipeline of assets to convert to higher and better use (such as horticultural developments) or improve productivity (such as cropping and cattle assets).”

Mr Thomas said demand for rural property had returned to more normal levels this year with both corporate buyers, like Rural Funds, and family farming enterprises showing more caution in the market.

“We might see those thinking about selling deciding now is the time and so the market might be confronted with some more supply,” he said.

“But I don’t expect a massive correction in land values as we move into the year.”