Chinese billionaire Xingfa Ma’s Tianma Bearing Group (TBG) has listed the modern feedlot and grazing property Emu Downs for lease, while it continues to shop around Balfour Downs and Wandanya stations in the Pilbara region.

TBG, an investment vehicle and ball bearing company, acquired the 6,593 hectare Emu Downs in 2010 from coal magnate Ric Stowe. It is now offering the property with a five-year lease plus a five-year option through Nutrien Harcourts WA’s Terry Norrish.

Balfour Downs and Wandanya were offered for sale in March with expectations of up to $40 million. Emu Downs has been used as a backgrounding property together with the Pilbara pair.

Emu Downs is about 220 kilometres north of Perth and 250 kilometres south east of Badgingarra, in a consistent 550 millimetre rainfall zone, and is being offered destocked and with an abundance of feed.

TBG has invested about $2 million into Emu Downs, half of which went into the yards which have a holding capacity of 3,000 head, and some went into the creation of eight smaller weaner paddocks. It has also invested in renovating the three homesteads.

Improvements also include two secondary sets of cattle yards for outer paddocks and servicing smaller mobs, a five-stand shearing shed with yards at either end of the property, and steel and iron utility sheds for machinery, workshop use, fodder storage and fertiliser storage. TBG has committed to $150,000 being put towards fertiliser for the current season.

Underground bores and some surface soaks at the west end water the property. Each paddock has access to a concrete trough or soak.

Expressions of interest close 29th July.

Balfour Downs and Wandanya span 634,004 hectares of land over three leases and include about 16,000 head of cattle, which are predominantly of Brahman bloodlines. TBG bought them in 2014 for a figure approaching $20 million.

A year later the company paid $47 million for the Wollogorang and Wentworth stations in the Northern Territory and Queensland, spanning 705,200 hectares and with 40,000 head of cattle, and which it sold last year for $53 million to graziers the McMillian family.

TBG also owns the Ferngrove Wine Group.