AUSTRALIA’S richest person, Gina Rinehart has added to her real estate portfolio, buying 1,918-hectare dairy in northern NSW that will be used to expand her Hancock Agriculture’s Wagyu cattle backgrounding capacity.
Split Rock Dairy, located north of Manilla and near Tamworth, will be renamed Buena Vista.
The property includes irrigated and dryland cropping, with 366 hectares irrigated through 11 pivots.
The purchase price and specific terms of the off-market deal remain confidential.
“The acquisition complements other agricultural acquisitions in the last 12 months including Moolan Downs and Ottley as well as other smaller acquisitions around Australia that complement other aggregations,” Hancock Agriculture said in a statement,
Wagyu cattle breeding properties Moolan Downs and Ottley were picked up from Packhorse Pastoral Co. in that company’s dispersal of properties after its executive director Tom Strachan tragically died in a plane crash.
Hancock last year acquired the 3,073-hectare irrigated and dryland cropping and grazing property Warra Warra in Queensland’s Western Downs region, and paid a reported $150 million for the Wee Waa aggregation in Northern NSW.
Rinehart offloaded four S. Kidman & Co cattle stations across the Northern Territory and Queensland for more than $200 million earlier this year. Hancock Agriculture owns a 67% stake in S. Kidman & Co through Outback Beef.
Hancock said Buena Vista “will now be integrated into the Hancock Agriculture portfolio with a focus on investing infrastructure and implementing actions areas that focus on animal welfare, and employee safety”.
It said the property will add to the company’s backgrounding capacity and feed into the company’s 2GR branded, vertically integrated full-blood and pure-bred Wagyu operation.
The company came in at number 14 on Beef Central’s top 25 lotfeeders list this year, with a capacity to feed 22,800 SCU across two yards in NSW and Queensland.
For Rinehart, the Buena Vista acquisition comes hot on the heels of her reported $240 million purchase of the 175 Eagle Street office tower in Brisbane from a Charter Hall fund, following her $100 million acquisition earlier this year of the 70 Eagle Street property from US funds group Pembroke.
Forbes currently has Rinehart’s worth listed at US$27 billion, or more than $40 billion.