This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
NEW South Wales western crown land lease Avenel Station is expecting interested north of $20 million from buyers looking for expansion, as well as those with funds for carbon credit projects.
Located 150 kilometres north of Broken Hill, Avenel Station spans 121,810 hectares and comprises Avenel, Mt Westwood, Joulnie and Teilt.
It features flood-out, open plains bush and natural grasses, and with a mix of red sandy and heavier flood-out loams and gravel on harder ridges.
Bordered at the its western boundary by 25 kilometres of dog fence, it has an estimated carrying capacity if 25,000 DSE and is set up with goat trapping facilities to provide further sources of income.
Stock is an attractive part of the offering, including 200 Angus and Angus Hereford cows, calved and calving, and 8,275 mixed-age ewes. Adult ewes have been joined to Old Ashrose rams and 6,500 are lambing.
Sections of the property once formed part of the Corona Station, held by Sir Sidney Kidman a century ago. Its current owners include Geoff Allan, a former jackaroo at the station who purchased the station with former banker and friend Joe Green, late media executive Ken Catlow, chairman Ian Milnes and other investors.
They have extensively improved the property with a focus on water, upgrading and installing new dams, solar pumps, troughs, tanks and poly pipe. There are 60 wells, bores and dams and around 5,000 hectares of flood out country stretching from Teilta to Avenel and to the South Australian border.
Attention has also been put towards dust suppression and boundary fencing.
Carbon credits
Avenel Station has a carbon farming deal in place, after independent experts were engaged in 2019 to provide an assessment of biological carbon sequestration. The owners subsequently sought to benefit from the emission reduction programs without impacting Avenel’s carrying capacity.
The forecast 165,000 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) over 10 years underwriting offers a potentially lucrative income diversification opportunity.
ACCUs are issued by the Clean Energy Regulator and bought by companies that have committed to zero net emissions by 2050, and acting on those commitments, as well as emitting businesses that exceed allowable baseline emissions. Prices are set by the market and ACCUs are nudging a spot price of $23 each, up from $16 earlier this year at a rate faster than the S&P/ASX 200 return so far this year.
Carbon credits were a drawcard for the Queensland government’s recent $11.5 million purchase of Bramwell Station, with the scheme at property able to generate over $150,000 in annual income.
The expressions of interest sale process for Avenel through Elders’ Adam Chilcott for all or part of the holding is being managed in two stages. First round offers are closing on 17th September.
