A large corporate in the form of Carter Holt Harvey is
selling 29 dairy farms near Tokoroa individually, while not
ruling out the possibility of a sale to another corporate.
Bayleys is marketing the farms at fixed prices. They range in
size from 218 to 726ha and in price from $5.1 million to
$10.4 million. The prices do not include Fonterra shares,
which CHH owns.
The farms are expected to fetch a total $224.5 million. They
are all within 20km of Tokoroa.
CHH is now wholly owned by New Zealand's richest man Graeme
Hart, who has developed the company into a world leading
beverage packaging provider. The company still owns the pulp
mill in Tokoroa.
New Zealand's two great forestry companies CHH and Fletcher
Challenge have both sold their huge forest estates in the
central North Island.
Some of the land the forests were on has been converted to
dairying by buyers, the most notable being Wairakei Pastoral,
a company associated with wealthy Aucklanders Trevor Farmer,
Adrian Burr and Mark Wyborn, which uses state-owned Landcorp
to manage its farm conversions. Wairakei's plans to source
water from the Waikato River have been controversial.
Mike Fraser-Jones, senior agent for realtor Bayleys, said the
CHH farms all had deep well bores for water.
There had been an attempt to market 16 of the farms in one
lot last year for $110 million and the farms were put on the
market as single units just before Christmas.
The tight financial situation is behind the decision to
market the farms individually.
The farms have sharemilkers with three-year contracts.
The farms are new -- the longest has been in production is 18
months and some came into production in June 2009.
Mr Fraser-Jones said there had been good interest in the
farms.
"But typical of anything in the market at the moment buyers
are taking a longer time to do due diligence and get finance
arranged," he said.
He said a sale to a corporate buyer was possible. "That
market is still there. We are just opening it up to more
buyers with smaller lots," he said.
Fonterra chairman Sir Henry van der Heyden farms in nearby in
Putaruru.
Landcorp has not shown interest in the farms.
