Chinese-owned investor Rifa Salutary has completed the two-year divestment program of its Australian grazing assets, offloading the large-scale cattle breeding property Cooplacurripa Station on the eastern fall of the Great Dividing Range for $35 million bare.
Rifa Salutary, the Australian arm of manufacturing and investment company Zhejiang Rifa Holding Group, began in July 2019 selling off its 14 beef and lamb production properties that it had picked up over five years after suffering a financial loss due to the drought.
The portfolio encompassed 43,776 hectares of land across northern New South Wales and Victoria and included 10,000 Angus breeders. About $150 million was expected for the entire lot.
The 22,548-hectare Cooplacurripa Station consists of three properties named Cooplacurripa, Number One and Nowendoc Saleyards and received average rainfall of 1,036 millimetres, with 682 megalitres of water entitlements.
It normally runs 3,900 Angus and Angus cross crows.
It is now in the hands of Phillip and Vanessa Bell of Goulburn, who run Dorper sheep and cattle at the Wirchelliba Station in western New South Wales, and will be moving from their Greendale base in the Southern Tablelands.
Col Medway from LAWD managed the sale.
Rifa had bought the property from financial services giant AMP in 2015 for $32 million.
Among the sales of the Rifa portfolio were the $50 million sale of Middlebrook one year ago, including up to 3,400 head of cattle, on the western fall of the Great Dividing Range. That campaign was relaunched at the same time as Cooplacurripa’s.
In Victoria’s western district, the 1842-settled Blackwood Park sold to Allan Myers’ Dunkeld Pastoral Company for more than $28 million late in 2019, around the same time that the 4,390 hectare Kulwin Park, in Victoria’s Southern Mallee region, sold to an offshore-backed fund for about $10 million.
The last sale arrives at a time in which owners have been looking to capitalise on the surging strong beef and cattle market.
This week, New York-based The Rohatyn Group offloaded the 27,879-hectare Kaiuroo cattle and cropping property aggregation in Central Queensland’s Mackenzie River district for nearly $69 million, well above the expected price of $55 million, while German family office THF Finance has sold a portfolio of cattle irrigated fodder portfolio for over $100 million and mining magnate Gina Rinehart has just sold three Western Australian properties for $100 million.
Rabobank research shows that farmer purchasing intentions are at the highest point in at least the past five years, with 9% of Australian farmers reporting that they intend to buy land within 12 months.
