Buyers latch onto Chinese farm portfolio
Rifa Salutary's Kulwin Park has changed hands for almost $10 million. Photo: Supplied

Buyers latch onto Chinese farm portfolio

An offshore player has swooped on Ashleigh Station in northern NSW, one of five properties put on the market as part of the Chinese-owned Rifa Salutary business.

It is understood the 4391-hectare property along the Gwydir Highway in an area known as the Northern Slopes is under offer from a foreign investor. Ashleigh comprises five contiguous holdings and is designed as a cattle finishing hub using winter and summer fodder crops.

If a transaction goes ahead as expected, it will be the third property to change hands from the five main aggregations in NSW and Victoria that make up the Rifa portfolio. In all, the properties encompass close to 44,000 hectares with a 10,000-head Angus cattle herd.

Rifa, a subsidiary of Chinese manufacturing and investment giant Zhejiang Rifa Holding Group, has been hoping to secure more than $150 million for its portfolio after putting it up for sale in July.

The Chinese moved to exit their investment after plunging to a $12.4 million after-tax loss in the year to March 2019. That result was attributed in the main to the drought conditions experienced across Australia.

The variation from state to state in those conditions has played in the sell-down of the portfolio, with the properties in less-affected parts of Victoria snapped up first.

First off the mark, Rifa sold its only Victorian livestock property, the 2406-hectare Blackwood Station in the Western District to renowned barrister Allan Myers’ Dunkeld Pastoral Company.

The property, which lies about 65 kilometres south of Swan Hill, has been used for dryland cropping and historically planted to barley, grazing oats and hay.

Along with Ashleigh, now under offer, there are two further properties in NSW where negotiations are continuing.

Middlebrook comprises two non-contiguous holdings across a total land area of 8613 hectares with 4000 Angus breeders, south of Tamworth.

The final property in the Rifa portfolio is Cooplacurripa, an aggregation of three holdings across 23,976 hectares. On the eastern fall of the Great Dividing Range and with frontage to the Cooplacurripa River and two other watercourses, the property is an area affected by the recent fires.

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