Gina Rinehart Joins Investors on Hunt for $200M in Rural Assets

Investors including Gina Rinehart are expected to cast a ruler over the AgCAP Sustainable Agriculture Fund, which comprises 17 farms across the country, valued at between $180 million to $200 million.

AgCAP, which manages SAF on behalf of superannuation funds and capital investors, including the Australian Catholic Super, AMP Capital, the former AUSCOAL Super now Mine Wealth & Wellbeing, the University of Melbourne, Christian Super and retiring AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick, is being sold as it has reached its seven-year closure.

Hancock Prospecting chairwoman Gina Rinehart may be a potential buyer. Photo: Supplied

Comprising more than 24,000 hectares of productive agricultural land located along the Eastern seaboard, from King Island, with 5500 dairy cows, to cotton and grain land in Moree, the SAF portfolio includes five aggregations.

CBRE’s Danny Thomas, who is advising on the sale, said he expects interest in the land and farms to extend to neighbouring farms through to large-scale rural investors, both domestic and international.

Cattle at the Sustainable Agriculture Fund’s King Island property. Photo: Cody Whiteman

Agribusiness has become a new favourite for superannuation funds and privates, such as Gina Rinehart, who headed an Australian-Chinese consortium in December 2016 to pay $386.5 million for the hotly-contested pastoral giant S Kidman & Co.

Mr. Thomas said it was “incredibly rare for a portfolio of high quality properties such as these, located in well-regarded and highly institutionalised agricultural regions to be offered to the market contemporaneously.”

According to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES), while real net farm cash income is tipped to fall 11 per cent in 2017/18 after a similar-sized gain in 2016/17, the farm sector is buoyant at present.

Chinese exports were up 4.2 per cent on a year earlier in yuan-denominated terms in February with imports up 44.7 per cent.

The rural sector forecasts are valuable for dependent enterprises across regional Australia.  The Chinese trade data gives a guide to economic conditions in the country and thus provides guidance for companies reliant on Chinese trade.

CommSec’s chief economist, Craig James said the farm sector is experiencing its “best conditions in decades”.

“Even with the expected pull-back, farm incomes should hold well above the levels recorded earlier in the decade.  A healthy farm sector is providing positive momentum for regional Australia, with knock-on benefits to service businesses and other dependent enterprises,” Mr.  James said.

Mr.  Thomas said the largest SAF asset is the North Star Aggregation being a 9710-hectare dryland cropping portfolio in northern NSW.

The Darlington Point Aggregation is in the Murrumbidgee Valley in NSW, while the Western Victoria Aggregation is dryland cropping portfolio at Lake Bolac in Victoria.

The King Island Aggregation has Angus cows, while the Cradle Coast Aggregation is a 1145-hectare portfolio of dairy farms milking 3000 cows plus replacements, located in Northern Tasmania.

SOURCE: The Sydney Morning Herald
POSTED: March 27, 2017
AUTHOR: Carolyn Cummins

@Luxury Estates – experts on visionary marketing of Australia’s most luxurious real estate for sale